The new black magic and the truth about the ouija-board

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Qass.
Book.

COPYRIGHT DEP05JT.

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in 2011 with funding from
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THE NEW BLACK MAGIC

THE NEW

BLACK MAGIC

AND

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE OUIJA-BOARD

BY

J. GODFREY RAUPERT, K. S. G.

Formerly a member of the British Society for Psychical

Research and Author of "Modern Spiritism,"

"Hell and Its Problems," etc., etc.

NEW YORK

THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY

Copyright 1919
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY

All Rights Reserved By
The Devin- Adair Company

5>CI.A530742

PREFACE

It should be pointed out that this book does not
attempt to deal with abnormal phenomena which
occur spontaneously — with apparitions or forms
resembling the dead coming unsought for, such
as have been recorded in all ages of the world's
history and of which we have had accounts dur-
ing the great war. Such phenomena follow some
law which is quite unknown to us, or they are due
to some act of God necessarily outside our knowl-
edge and beyond our control. The evidence in
favor of these phenomena is of a varied kind and
is, in many respects, very conflicting. It is dif-
ficult, in most instances, to distinguish the ob-
jective from the purely subjective. In a variety
of cases the phantom seen is manifestly the crea-
tion of the percipient's own brain. The dead, with
few exceptions, present themselves, not in the
form in which they appeared when last seen on
earth, but in that in which the percipient best
remembers them. Their statements respecting
the other life and their new environment, too,
vary considerably and are often quite contra-
dictory.

It is admitted, however, that there are credible
instances in which the departure from the body

vi

Preface

of some member of a family or community has
been intimated to some distant member by an ap-
parently objective though fugitive appearance of
the deceased. We have records of phenomena
of this kind in the history of the lives of the
saints and martyrs, and the Catholic Church
has never denied their reality. On the con-
trary, she has maintained that reality when a
skeptical world denied and ridiculed them. But
she has also maintained that, since such phe-
nomena may emanate from different sources,
and since those produced by the act of God may
be imitated by the enemy of God, it is not possible
to speak dogmatically respecting them. She has,
as a rule, tested their aim and character by the
Apostolic test (see p. 141), or by their effects,
moral and spiritual, upon the life of the per-
cipient. She has always discouraged any seek-
ing after them, and any attempt to regard their
occurrence as an indication of a peculiar state of
sanctity. In any case, it will be seen that such
phenomena have nothing in common and can-
not be said to be identical with those which are
invoked and induced, for which a circle has to
be formed, for which a medium is employed, and
for which favorable conditions have to be cre-
ated. It is with such phenomena alone that this

book deals.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

I. The Claim of Modern Science . . i

II. The Claim Specified 17

III. The Evidence of History .... 29

IV. The Evidence of Fact and Expe-

rience 47

V. The Evidence of True Science . . yy

VI. The Evidence of Christian Thought

and Experience 109

VII. The Evidence of Reason and Common-
Sense 163

VIII. The Inevitable Inference . . . 191

IX. The Truth About the Ouija-Board 205

X. Index 235

THE CLAIM OF MODERN SCIENCE

THE CLAIM OF MODERN SCIENCE

The reading and thinking world has recently
been startled by the publication of books and
articles from die pens of eminent scientific and
literary men in which the claim is made that re-
liable communications are being received from
the spirits of departed human beings and that
these communications are of such a character
that they may not unfairly be regarded as a
New Revelation.

Two of these writers, the English physicist
Sir Oliver Lodge, and Sir Conan Doyle, of Sher-
lock Holmes' fame, who may be regarded as the
spokesmen of this class of innovators, boldly as-
sert that, in view of these remarkable and, as
they think, authentic disclosures, the traditional
teachings of Christianity will have to undergo
a radical transformation and that their recon-
struction, in the light of the new knowledge thus
obtained, will have to take place.

That large numbers of that class of persons
who are always on the lookout for new develop-
ments in the sphere of Religion and who do not
know that the new in Religion is seldom the true,
and that the true is never the new, should wel-

[33

The New Black Magic

come these bold assertions and should rejoice
that they emanate from such eminently respect-
able quarters cannot take us by surprise. Such
persons are always glad to welcome any so-called
new religion, especially when it is seen to free
them from obligations to which they have never
submitted fully and willingly and which provides
them with a more convenient and comfortable
and, as they consider, reasonable philosophy of
life. The multiplicity of the already existing
"new" religions and new-thought movements is
a striking illustration of this tendency of the
modern mind. But that men of high intelligence
who might be supposed to discern the fallacy of
such contentions and whose outlook on the world
might be expected to be of a very different char-
acter, should put forth such claims is a problem
perplexing minds apt to think more deeply and
seriously about such matters.

To those of us, however, who are more in-
timately acquainted with this subject and who
are behind the scenes of the modern psychical
research movement this problem does not present
any very great difficulty. They know that these
scientific researchers, constantly engaged in
spiritistic experiments, and necessarily obeying
the laws by which spirit-intercourse becomes
possible, are themselves the victims of the intel-

[4]

The Claim of Modern Science

ligences who are striving to impose these new
teachings upon the world, and that their own
mental apparatus is (imperceptibly to them-
selves) interfered with to such an extent that
they lose the power of an all-round view of the
matter and of forming a true and right judgment
respecting it. The entire history of spiritism
with its countless victims goes to confirm the
truth of this statement, and numbers of disil-
lusioned spiritists, in all countries, have ac-
knowledged it. Indubitable spirit-messages, as
is well known today, cannot be received without
the cultivation of a certain degree of mind-pas-
sivity, and mind-passivity constitutes the open
door by which the personality of the investigator
is invaded and by which spirit-control is effected.
The extent of this control necessarily depends
upon a variety of conditions — mental, moral and
physical — but it is never absent, and the last per-
son conscious of it is often the investigator him-
self. It is here and here alone where the solution
of the perplexing problem indicated above is to
be found. I have known many of the men en-
gaged in the effort to provide the modern rest-
less world with a new revelation and I am per-
suaded that they would, years ago, have been the
first to repudiate the absurd claim which they
are now making and that they would have pro-

[5]

The New Black Magic

nounced it preposterous. I have already written
so much on the subject of Spiritism, and my
books are now so well known, that I do not pro-
pose to go again over the whole ground. My
correspondents in all countries have acknowl-
edged that I have not merely myself investigated
the phenomena with care and patience but that
I have, in the interpretation of them, weighed all
the facts fairly and squarely and that I have left
no vital consideration out of account. I propose,
therefore, to address myself in this volume to the
main contention put forth in these recent state-
ments and publications: Is a New Revelation,
by means of spirit-manifestations, in progress?
Before entering upon an examination of this con-
tention, however, I am anxious to say a few
words by way of introduction. It seems to me
that Sir Conan Doyle's loose and illogical mode
of reasoning is already apparent from several
things he says in his account of the progressive
development of his own religious and philosoph-
ical ideas.

He tells us that, although strongly impressed
by the materialistic philosophy, he had not
ceased to believe in God. "I had never ceased,"
he writes, "to be a theist. ... I believed then as I
believe now in an intelligent Force behind all the
phenomena of nature. . . . But when it came to

[6]

The Claim of Modern Science

a question of our little personalities surviving
death it seemed to me that the whole analogy of
nature was against it. It seemed to me a delu-
sion and I was convinced that death did indeed
end all, though I saw no reason why that should
affect our duty towards humanity during our
transitory existence.''

But is not this a wholly unphilosophical and
illogical mode of reasoning? All true reflection
and deduction must surely lead to the conclusion
that belief in the existence of an intelligent cre-
ative Power and in a future life for man must
stand or fall together. Our most elementary no-
tions of intelligence demand this. Our moral
feelings and instincts dictate it. The entire
history of Religion bears witness to it. What
are we to think of a Creator who calls a being
into existence which has to pass through a long
training and education, often carried on by
means of pain and suffering and anguish, who
endows it with longings and instincts emphati-
cally pointing to a future life, in which the
wrongs of the present life are to be righted, who
provides for the foundation of the closest and
most affectionate ties and relation, but who has
nevertheless decreed that all these hopes and de-
sires, all these longings and aspirations, shall end
in corruption and the grave — in the entire extinc-

[7]

The New Black Magic

tion and disappearance of the personality ? How
can we associate the very idea of intelligence
with such a Creator; how can we be expected to
love and reverence him and to obey the heartless
laws which he has made and which rob us of even
the few transitory pleasures which we might en-
joy? Does not our entire moral nature, that very
nature which he has given us, rebel against such
a notion? Would not all human life be a mock-
ery and would we not be driven to the inevitable
conclusion that the Creator is a monster who
cannot, on any conceivable plea, claim our rever-
ence and allegiance? Such an inference is ac-
cording to the necessary and unchanging laws of
human thought and no reflecting mind can evade
it. How much more logical is the inference
drawn from such a mode of reasoning by the
Apostle St. Paul and expressed in the familiar
words: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow
we die."

But how little the philosophical vaporings of
the modern scientific intellect can be trusted is
surely evident from this one example. Again
both Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Conan Doyle
seem to be unconscious of the fact that a funda-
mental fallacy underlies the very notion of a
"New" Revelation. They would surely be more
consistent and logical if they spoke of these

[8]

The Claim of Modern Science

spirit-messages as a true or the true revelation
intimating that the old one has been found to be
false and is therefore no revelation at all. For,
since the so-called new revelation contravenes the
old in all its vital characteristics the latter could
never have been a revelation in any intelligible
sense, and must therefore be regarded as a
grievous imposition on the credulity of mankind.
It is here, be it carefully noted, not a question
of a progressive disclosure of divine truth or
truths such as we have in the records of the Old
and New Testaments, God revealing Himself
gradually: first by the promulgation of a series
of elementary laws, then by means of inspired
patriarchs and prophets and seers, and finally
by the incarnation of His Only-Begotten Son, the
later disclosures confirming and illuminating and
adding to the earlier. It is here a question of a
complete and utter revolution and upheaval, the
new revelation contravening the old, and elim-
inating its essential and characteristic teachings
and principles. For even such radical innova-
tors and iconoclasts as Lodge and Doyle will
scarcely dare to assert, in view of the indubitable
facts of History, that the doctrine of the In-
carnation of the Son of God — of the Word made
Flesh — in the historic sense, in the afterthought
of theology and not a vital and integral part of

[9]

The New Black Magic

the primitive Christian Revelation. And since
the spirits of the seance-room everywhere em-
phatically deny the truth of this doctrine, the old
revelation could never have been true; but man-
kind must, for nearly two thousand years, have
been laboring under a fatal delusion. Or are
we seriously to consider the absurd suggestion
that what was true in one age ceased to be true in
another, and that the all-wise Creator stooped
or consented to a deception which any normal
human mind would unhesitatingly pronounce
contemptible, seeing that in this very deception
have centered the highest hopes and noblest as-
pirations and most painful sacrifices of the best
of men and women throughout nearly twenty
centuries of human life. And at what particular
epoch, one is tempted to ask, did the old revela-
tion cease to be true and the disillusionment of
mankind become necessary? The utter ab-
surdity of this scientific juggling with ideas and
principles, which alas! passes muster in even in-
tellectual and instructed circles, is very effectively
exhibited in Mr. Gilbert Chesterton's books, espe-
cially in his Orthodoxy (p. 135), where he
writes :

"An imbecile habit has arisen in modern con-
troversy of saying that such and such a creed
can be held in one age but cannot be held in an-

[10]

The Claim of Modern Science

other. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in
the twelfth century but is incredible in the twen-
tieth. You might as well say that a certain phil-
osophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be
believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say
of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to
half-past three but not suitable to half-past four.
What a man can believe depends upon his phil-
osophy, not upon the clock of the century."

What cannot be sufficiently emphasized, by
way of introduction to a discussion of the sub-
ject, is the circumstance that we cannot here
speak of a reconstruction or reinterpretation of
Christianity. The use of such terms is mis-
chievous in the extreme since they are only cal-
culated to throw dust into the eyes of the public
and to hide the real truth of the matter from the
minds of sensitive persons. It is merely "an un-
loosening of the ropes one by one, gently and
gradually," as the spirits would term it, and as
they have counseled it in order not to disquiet the
consciences of those still thinking along Chris-
tian lines, and hence likely to get alarmed at the
character of these new disclosures. But there is
no possibility of a reconciliation between Historic
Christianity and Spiritism. The teachings of
one are destructive of those of the other, and
if one is true the other is necessarily false. Some

[ii]

The New Black Magic

writers have attempted this kind of reconciliation
and it has found favor with certain orders of
minds. But the well-informed student of the
subject cannot fail to see through the deception
and discern the underlying fallacy. Such so-
called reconciliations have only been possible,
either by unduly emphasizing and falsely inter-
preting certain elements in Spiritism which bear
some surface resemblance to Christian teachings
and manifestations, or by stripping Christianity
of all its essential and characteristic doctrines
and reducing it to a mere system of ethics, such
as the world knew of before the advent of Christ,
and as it has grown familiar with in the present
age.

That this is so will be clearly seen from the
introductory statement to the following chapter
in which I propose to summarize the essential
contents of the "New Revelation," as they may
be gathered from the writings of some of our re-
constructionists and from the emphatic teachings
and assertions of those "higher" spirits who
manifested through the mediumship of the late
Mr. Stainton Moses, and whose disclosures are
regarded as a kind of Bible by spiritists and in-
vestigators.

Mr. Stainton Moses himself, who had been a
clergyman of the Church of England, and who

[12]

The Claim of Modern Science

was therefore well able to form a judgment as
to what constitutes historical and essential
Christianity, fully admitted that, if the spirit-
disclosures were true, they meant revolution and
not simply reform, and he was honest enough to
face and proclaim that fact. He did not seek to
evade the issues by attempting impossible com-
promises or reconstructions.

"Spiritualism," he wrote, "is revolution, not
simply reform. It is no time for polite patching
up; we are in the very dust and din of spiritual
strife, in the thick of a great spiritual conflict,
the effects of which we shall try in vain to escape,
and it is no time now to go about deprecating
noise and timidly sprinkling rose-water to quench
the powder fumes of battle. The battle is upon us
and it is waste time to grumble at its smoke
and din."

Another writer1 on this subject states the case
equally emphatically :

"The religion of the future," he says, "is in our
midst already with signs and wonders uprising
like a swollen tide. . . . Christianity has spent its
force and now another revelation has succeeded
it — a revelation suited to the needs of the time."

When Mr. Stainton Moses first received these
spirit-messages and realized that they violently

iSt. George Stock in "Attempts at Truth," P. 128.
[13 3

The New Black Magic

contradicted his Christian beliefs and habitual
modes of thought he had the strongest possible
misgivings as to the character and aim of the in-
telligences conveying them and, for a time, he
shrank from a continuation of this intercourse.
And it is evident, too, that, at this period, the
answers to his questions furnished by the spirit
Imperator did not at all satisfy him.

"I could not get rid of the idea," he wrote,
"that the Faith of Christendom was practically
upset by their issue. I believed that, however it
might be disguised, such would be the outcome
of these communications in the end. The cen-
tral dogmas seemed especially attacked and it
was this that startled me. . . . Then came a doubt
as to how far all might be the work of satan
transformed into an angel of light laboring for
the subversion of the Faith." He addressed the
following question to Imperator (one of the
"higher" spirits) : "It would help me somewhat
if I could picture you as a definite individuality.
But, on the whole, I wish you would leave me
alone."

Imperator's answer was:

"The orthodox religionists of His (Christ's)
time charged Him with association with Beelze-
bub. When you have had time to think we will
answer."

[14]

The Claim of Modern Science

But Mr. Stainton Moses was again and again
urged to bring to the circle a patient and passive
mind and, as this passivity increased, the normal
operations of thought and reflection were inter-
fered with, and the principles of the new spirit-
revelation were accepted. He ceased to be a
Christian and embraced the conventional spirit-
creed and philosophy. But he retained sense
enough to recognize that that creed is wholly and
utterly irreconcilable with the doctrines of His-
torical Christianity.

[*Sl

II

THE CLAIM SPECIFIED

THE CLAIM SPECIFIED

Although there is, as the literature of Spirit-
ism testifies, and as is universally admitted, the
greatest possible divergence in the teachings
given by the spirits in various countries, the es-
sential principles of the ''New Revelation" re-
specting which there is agreement may be stated
as follows. I will quote Lodge's and Doyle's own
words and the statements of those spirits in
whose utterances the largest porportion of spirit-
ists place confidence.

1. The "New Revelation' is divine and au-
thoritative.

''I seemed suddenly to see that this sub-
ject with which I had so long dallied was
not merely the study of a force outside the
rules of science but that it was really some-
thing tremendous, a breaking-down of the
wall between two worlds, a direct message
from beyond, a call of hope and of guidance
to the human race at the time of its deepest
affliction. ... A new revelation seemed to me
in the course of delivery to the human race,
though how far it is still in what I may call
the John-the-Baptist stage and how far
some greater fullness and clearness may be
[19]

The New Black Magic

expected hereafter is more than any man
can say." (Doyle.)

"We claim our authority to be divine and
await with confidence the acceptance of our
mission when the times are ripe for our
teaching." (The Spirit Imperator.)
Man has not fallen.

"So long as there was any question of the
fall of man there was at least some sort of
explanation of such phrases (redemption
from sin), but when it became certain that
man had never fallen — when with ever
fuller knowledge we could trace our an-
cestral course down through the cave-man
and drift-man back to that shadowy and far-
off time when the man-like ape slowly
evolved into the ape-like man — looking back
on all this vast succession of life, we knew
that it had always been rising from step to
step. Never zvas there any evidence of a
fair (Doyle.)

"The spirits reject as a baseless figment
the story of a fall from a state of primeval
innocence and perfection to a state of deg-
radation in the person of Adam and Eve."
(Stainton Moses.)

"For the present you may know that the
theological story of a fall from a state of
[20]

The Claim Specified

purity to a state of sin, as usually detailed
and accepted, is misleading." (The Spirit
Imperator. )
3. The Incarnation and Sufferings and Death
of Jesus Christ were in no sense an atone-
ment for the sins of man. Christ was some
higher created intelligence who came to re-
form the world by his moral teaching and
his personal example.

"One can see no justice in a vicarious sac-
rifice nor in the God who could be placated
by such means. . . . Too much seemed to be
made of Christ's death. It is no uncommon
thing to die for an idea. Men die continu-
ally for their convictions. Thousands of our
lads are doing it at this instant in France.
... In my opinion far too much stress
has been laid upon Christ's death and far
too little on His life. That was where
the true grandeur and the true lesson lay.
According to spirit-teaching, the Christ-
spirit came down upon the earth at a time of
great earthly depravity to give to the people
the example and teaching of an ideal life and
then returned to his own high station, hav-
ing left an example which is still occasion-
ally followed. Nothing here of atonement
and redemption."

[21]

The New Black Magic

"In such a view reason and faith would be
reconciled. . . . Christianity must change or
perish. Our churches are half-empty;
women their chief supporters; both learned
and poor, in town or country, are alienated
from it." (Doyle.)

"It was not the eternal purpose of God
that Jesus should die when the work of the
Christ was but just commencing. That was
man's work, foul, evil, accursed. . . . He
came in the sense that all regenerators of
men have been their saviours. ... In the
sense that the scene on Calvary was fore-
ordained to occur when man consummated
his foul deed he came not. And this is a
mighty truth." (The Spirit Imperator.)
Death is not a terminus fixing man's destiny.

His education continues after death. The
consequences of sin are never permanent.
The imperfect or undeveloped soul passes,
when separated from the body, into a tem-
porary penal state which becomes a means
of advancing its development and education.

"The spirit (after death) is not a glorified
angel or a goblin damned, but it is simply
the person himself, containing all his
strength and weakness, his wisdom and his
folly, exactly as he has retained his personal
[22]

The Claim Specified

appearance. . . . Hell drops out altogether, as
it has long dropped out of the thoughts of
every reasonable man. This odious con-
ception, so blasphemous in its view of the
Creator, arose from the exaggerations of
oriental phrases and may perhaps have been
of service in a coarse age where men were
frightened by fires as wild beasts are scared
by the travellers. Hell as a permanent place
does not exist. But the idea of punishment,
of purifying chastisement, in fact of Pur-
gatory, is justified by the reports from the
other side." (Doyle.)

"To suppose that the short period of
earth-life is sufficient to save or damn a soul
to all eternity and that the act of death has
power to convert an ordinary man into either
an angel or a demon, to make him happy
in the society of the highest saints and able
to associate with Deity, or to condemn him
to fraternize with the lowest of the low,
amid whatever physical or mental torments
were imagined as likely to accompany and
emphasize his fall from grace — all this was
so repugnant to common-sense that as a mat-
ter of fact it was not believed." (Lodge.)

"We know of no Hell save that within the
soul ; a Hell which is fed by the flame of un-

The New Black Magic

purified and untamed lust and passion,
which is kept alive by remorse and agony of
sorrow; which is fraught with the pangs
that spring up unbidden from the results of
past misdeeds, and from which the only
escape lies in retracing the steps and in cul-
tivating the qualities which shall bear fruit
in love and knowledge of God. In perpetu-
ally progressing the spirit finds its true hap-
piness. There is no finality; none, none,
none!" (The Spirit Imperator.)
As I am anxious to avoid writing a big book
and to again traverse ground already covered in
my earlier works, I have thus briefly and con-
cisely summarized the main teachings of the
"New Revelation" from which it will be seen that
they are wholly subversive of Historical Chris-
tianity. There cannot manifestly here be any
question of a reconstruction or reinterpretation
in the light of the new knowledge. Such phrases
are clearly utterly misleading, and are merely
attempts to let the Christian down gently- — not
to alarm and disquiet him overmuch. If the dis-
closures of the higher spirits are true, Historical
Christianity is false — the Apostles' Creed is
based upon a misconception. If Christianity, on
the other hand, is true, these new teachings har-
bor a perilous delusion and the higher spirits

[24]

The Claim Specified

are liars and deceivers. We have therefore to
address ourselves to the question: What is the
evidence in favor of their veracity? And, in
attempting to answer this question, we shall have
to examine the matter from various points of
view — to seek for light in many directions. The
subject is too serious, and too vital in its issues
to dismiss it with a superficial consideration or to
fall back upon our personal inclinations or pre-
conceptions.

"The body of fresh doctrine," says Sir Conan
Doyle, "comes in the main through automatic
writing where the hand of the medium is con-
trolled, either by an alleged human-being ... or
an alleged angel.'' "These," he goes on to say,
"are supplemented by trance-utterances, verbal
messages of spirits given through the lips of the
mediums . . . sometimes by direct voice, occa-
sionally through table-tilting."

To the question: "How do we know that they
are really from the beyond, the answer must
be that we require signs which we can test before
we accept assertions which we cannot test. These
signs are, as in the case of Stainton Moses, when
the messages are accompanied by a number of
abnormal gifts. If Miss Julia Ames can tell Mr.
Stead things in her own earth-life of which he
could not have had cognizance, and if these

[25]

The New Black Magic

things are shown, when tested, to be true, then
one is more inclined to think that those things
which cannot be tested are true also."

"If Raymond (Sir Oliver Lodge's son) can
tell us of a photograph, no copy of which has
reached England and which proved to be ex-
actly as he had described it, and if he can give us
through the lips of strangers all sorts of details
of his home-life which his own relatives had to
verify before they found them to be true, is it
unreasonable to suppose that he is fairly accurate
in his description of his own experiences and
state of life at the very moment at which he is
communicating ?"

Now in order to simplify the matter, I will
emphasize but two conditions which all reason-
able and right-thinking men must regard as nec-
essary conditions on which we can even consider
the question of a new revelation.

1. Such a revelation must, in the first place,
be consistent with our instinctive ideas of the
dignity, justice, and holiness of God.

2. It must, secondly, both in its character and
effects and in the mode of its delivery, be in ac-
cord with our religious feelings and the dictates
of our reason.

As I feel confident that no reflecting reader,
whatever his religious or philosophical attitude

[26]

The Claim Specified

may be, will find fault with this definition of the
inevitable attitude of a mind seeking the solu-
tion of such a problem as this, I can but ask him
to keep these two principles steadily in view
throughout the enquiry. Looking at all the facts
of the case then which our modern knowledge
and our experience have brought to light, what
is the evidence respecting the true origin and
character of these spirit-disclosures?

[*7l

Ill

THE EVIDENCE OF HISTORY

THE EVIDENCE OF HISTORY

Although it is incidentally admitted by the
scientific investigators of psychical phenomena
that intercourse with the unseen spirit-world has
been known and practiced in all ages of the
world's history and by practically all races and
nations, they nevertheless make statements from
which they clearly desire it to be inferred that
they have made marvelous discoveries and that
the objective reality of this intercourse has been
established by modern science.

Some years ago Sir Oliver Lodge declared that
the wall which may be conceived to be dividing
the two states of being was "wearing thin in
places" and that, amid the roar of water and of
other noises, we on our side (that is he and his
fellow researchers) are beginning to hear now
and again the strokes of the pick-axes of our
comrades on the other side."

This statement, of course, exemplifies one of
those many conceits and presumptions of modern
science of which we have such striking evidence
in our days. For a single glance at history goes
to demonstrate the fact that, so far from making
any new discovery in this sphere of research,
scientific men have been the last to come to a

[3i]

The New Black Magic

knowledge of facts with which even the savage
man was acquainted and with which the man in
the street has been long familiar. So far, there-
fore, as any claim to newness in the matter of the
mode of delivery of the "New Revelation" is
concerned, the claim absolutely falls to the
ground. So-called revelations, by means of
spirit-manifestations, have been made in all times
of human history, and that hole in the wall or
partition, of which Sir Oliver speaks, has been
known to exist as long as man has lived on this
earth. It was the materialistic scientist who so
persistently denied it and who, as in many other
matters, had "his facts all wrong."

And the very use of the word Necromancy in-
dicates that these manifestations and disclosures
were pretty universally believed to emanate from
the spirits of the dead.

The first fact, therefore, which we have to rec-
ognize and keep in mind is that there is nothing
new, either in these revelations or in the mode
of their delivery. Spiritism and mediumship are
as old as the world. It is merely in the form
in which they have displayed themselves that
they have varied in different ages and with dif-
ferent races.

Under the word Necromancy we read in the
New International Encyclopedia:

[32]

The Evidence of History

"A method of divination by which the dead
were supposed to be conjured up and to answer
questions concerning the future. Its practice
was certainly extremely ancient. It was con-
demned in the Old Testament, and among the
Greeks it was familiar in Homer's day. In his-
torical days necromancy was practiced by priests
and consecrated persons at many shrines in
Greece. It was also current among the Romans
although banned by the Church under Constan-
tine. It was also employed by the Northern peo-
ples, and, in the mediaeval and later period,
passed over into sorcery."

The Catholic Encyclopedia makes a statement
to the same effect :

"Along with other forms of divination and
magic, necromancy is found in every nation of
antiquity and is a practice common to paganism
at all times and in all countries, but nothing cer-
tain can be said as to the place of its origin."

All research goes to show that it was known
and practiced in Persia, Babylonia, Chaldea,
Etruria, Egypt, Greece and Rome. Among the
Romans Horace several times alludes to the in-
vocation of the dead. Cicero testifies that his
friend Appius practiced necromancy. In the
first Christian centuries it was common among
the pagans.

[33]

The New Black Magic

Sir Conan Doyle himself naively informs us
that M. Jacolliot, an Indian Judge, "found among
the Indian Fakirs every phenomenon of advanced
European mediumship, everything which Home
(the famous medium) had done. The Fakirs
said that they were done by the Pitris or spirits,
and that the only difference in their procedure
from ours seemed to be that they made more use
of direct evocation. They claimed that these
powers were handed down from time immemorial
and traced back to the Chaldees."

From the records of Old Testament two facts
become abundantly clear :

1. The various known forms of mediumship
and necromancy were commonly practiced.

2. The practice was condemned by the Jewish
law-givers and prophets as being destructive of
the true religious and moral life of the people.

In Leviticus XIX, 31, we read:

"Go not aside after wizards, neither ask any-
thing of soothsayers to be defiled by them; I am
the Lord your God."

In Leviticus XX, 6:

"The soul that shall go aside after magicians
and soothsayers, and shall commit fornication
with them, I will set my face against that soul
and destroy it out of the midst of its people,"

In Leviticus XX, 27:

[34]

The Evidence of History

"A man or woman, in whom there is a pythoni-
cal or divining spirit, dying, let them die; they
shall stone them ; their blood be upon them."

In Deuteronomy XVIII? 10:

"Neither let there be found among you any-
one that . . . consulteth soothsayers, or ob-
serveth dreams and omens, neither let there be
any wizard, nor charmer, nor anyone that con-
sulteth pythonic spirits, or fortune-tellers, or that
seeketh the truth from the dead."

Isaias VIII, 19:

"And when they say to you: seek of pythons
and of diviners, who mutter in their enchant-
ments; should not the people seek of their God,
for the living of the dead ?"

In the records of the New Testament, we are
confronted by the remarkable fact that the spirits
speaking to Our Lord through the mouths of the
possessed, or "controlled" as the modern psychi-
cal researchers would say, and using the lan-
guage and thought-forms of ordinary human be-
ings, were always denounced by Him as being
devils. He did not parley with them ; He did not
inquire what they had to say for themselves,
what revelation they might have to make. He
cast them out. In no single instance does He,
the spirit from the higher spheres who, accord-
ing to the spiritists, might reasonably be expected

[353

The New Black Magic

to acknowledge at least the legitimacy of this
mode of communication and intercourse, dis-
play the slightest hesitation in the matter. Not
once did He ask these obsessing entities to iden-
tify themselves, or to tell them something respect-
ing their supposed past earth-life and the pur-
pose of their return. From no single recorded in-
stance can the modern spiritist derive the faintest
measure of support for his contention.

And the obsessed, themselves, and the people
who kept them, did not seem to entertain the
slightest doubt on the subject. We read in St.
Matthew IX, 33:

"After the devil was cast out, the dumb man
spoke and the multitude wondered," etc.

And this is characteristic of all Our Lord's
dealings with the "controlled," which are so fre-
quent and so well known that it is not necessary
to quote them in detail here.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 16, we
have the account of St. Paul's dealings with a
woman who manifestly practiced what we would
call today the art of mediumship. It was the
case of "a certain girl . . . who brought to her
masters much gain by divining." Adapting her-
self, like many mediums of our own time, to the
situation and seeking, no doubt, to secure the
favor of the Apostles, she acknowledged tnem to

[36]

The Evidence of History

be "the servants of the most high God." "And
this she did many days." But St. Paul, too, dis-
played no manner of doubt as to the nature of
the woman's "gift" or of the character of the
entity operating by its means. He commanded
the spirit "in the name of Jesus Christ to go out
of her. And he went out the same hour."

When we trace the record further down to the
early Christian centuries, we come upon evidence
which is equally clear and conclusive. The
Fathers and Doctors of the Church bear testi-
mony that the spirits, speaking through the
mouths of the "controlled," make assertions sim-
ilar to those made by Doyle's spirits today; but
the clear spiritual insight of those sturdy Chris-
tians, and the careful observation of accompany-
ing phenomena, made it easy for them to discover
and expose the delusion.

The philosopher St. Justin, who became a
Christian in A.D. 135, and was martyred in 166,
declared . . . 2"that it is nothing else that the
demons strive after than to draw away man from
God the Creator and from Christ, His only-
Begotten."

In a passage quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Augustine, writing in the fifth century, said of
the demons that they sometimes learn with the

s I Apologia, 58.

[37]

The New Black Magic

greatest ease the dispositions of man, not only
such as are expressed by words, but also such as
are conceived in thought when certain signs are
thereby expressed on the bodily organism of the
soul.

St. Thomas himself, writing in the thirteenth
century, says that "often the demons simulate to
be the souls of the dead to confirm heathens who
believe this in their error."

Impersonation, admittedly so frequently ob-
served and practiced in our time, is clearly an
ancient trick, but strangely successful in deceiv-
ing the scientific mind.

Now what are the practical lessons which we
learn from the simple facts of history, pagan,
Jewish and Christian ; what are the inferences to
be drawn from them ?

1. They teach us, in the first place, that so
far as the records of history go, it is evident that
a mode of communication between the world's
seen and unseen has always existed ; that the wall
dividing the two states has always been "thin in
places." Science, therefore, has made no new
discovery and, if we are to judge by the beliefs
and practices of the pagan nations, it is equally
evident that some kind of revelation from that
mysterious world has always been in process of
delivery.

[38]

The Evidence of History

2. We are, in the second place, confronted
by the undeniable fact that the rulers and law-
givers, under God's ancient covenant, always and
without exception pronounced this intercourse to
be evil and forbade it under the severest penalties.
This fact, of course, can only be accounted for
by the circumstance that it was not only contrary
to the declared law of God, but that experience
had proved these practices to be disastrous to the
moral life of the people.

The Jews manifestly had acquired a knowledge
of these practices in their contact with the neigh-
boring pagan nations, and indulgence in them
was known to estrange them from the love and
service of the One true God.

And, strange to say, we have a modern scien-
tific man,himself a confessed spiritist, recogniz-
ing and bearing witness to this fact, and confirm-
ing the reasonableness of the Jewish enactments
on the ground of personal experience.

"'These practices were condemned/' writes
Sir William Barrett, "in unmeasured terms by
the Hebrew prophets. . . . They were prohibited,
as a study of the whole subject shows — not only,
or chiefly, because they were the practices and
part of the religious rites of the pagan nations
around, but mainly because they tended to ob-
scure the divine idea and to weaken the supreme

[39 3

The New Black Magic

faith in and reverent worship of the One Omnip-
otent Being whom the nation was set apart to
proclaim. . . . Instead of the arm of the Lord
beyond and above them, a motley crowd of pious,
lying, vain or gibbering spirits would seem to
people the unseen; and weariness, perplexity and,
finally, despair would enervate and destroy the
nation/'

And, "the same peril," naively continues this
spiritist professor, "exists today and through all
time will continue to exist." Here, at any rate,
we have a learned professor, intimately ac-
quainted with the subject, who does not place
any confidence in any new revelations emanating
from this quarter or coming to us by means of
these practices.

3. We are, in the third place, surely justified
in asking the following questions :

How comes it to pass that, seeing the way of
communication has always been open, the great
departed teachers and exponents of Christianity
have never made use of it in order to disillusion
us respecting our supposed misbeliefs and our
misinterpretations of the words of Christ? Ac-
cording to the new spirit-revelation, Christendom
must, soon after the death of Christ, have lapsed
into the grossest idolatry, worshipping a higher
spirit as God, and building up upon his simple

[40]

The Evidence of History

teachings a so-called supernatural system of doc-
trine which is wholly without foundation in fact
and inference.

These great Fathers and Teachers must surely
have discovered this on their entrance into the
spirit-world and must have conceived a burning
desire to correct the error and to inform their
disciples and followers of the fact. And we may
surely add that God Himself might well be be-
lieved to be a willing party to such rectifying dis-
closures, for were not His own honor and truth
and dignity involved ? Indeed we may go so far
as to say that if any legitimate and lawful means
of communication, by way of mediumship, ever
existed, we have, in view of so serious a matter,
a right to expect such a setting right of mistaken
ideas and beliefs.

But neither have such rectifying disclosures
from manifestly verifiable and authentic sources,
and by means of a safe and rational method of
communication, ever come, nor is there the
slightest evidence that the disciples of the great
teachers named have received any impressions
from the unseen world to that effect.

Telepathy, the power of one mind to impress
another mind, is now universally acknowledged
to be a phenomenon in constant operation in the
universe, and it is fully conceded that if this can

[4i]

The New Black Magic

be shown to be so in the case of incarnate minds,
it may be presumed to be possible between minds
Jwcarnate and minds wcarnate.

And the doctrine of the Communion of Saints
fully confirms all this. We pray to the Saints
and ask their intercession because we believe that
they can hear us and that they know, not only
what is going on in our minds, but what is going
on in the world with respect to the work in which
they were keenly interested while on earth.

Now imagine St. Dominic, St. Ignatius or St.
Alphonsus discovering in the other world that
their teaching had been all wrong and that their
disciples today are proclaiming to the world a
most deadly error and superstition, and yet these
great and wise men finding no means at all of
conveying this fact to the minds of the living,
either by direct communication or by means of
unmistakable telepathic impressions!

If credible communications can be made by the
derelicts of the spiritual world, they can surely
be made by the spirits of great and intelligent
and conscientious personalities who might rea-
sonably be expected to devise means of proving
to us the veracity and reliability of their state-
ments.

Nothing of this kind has ever occurred. So
far the disclosures of the "New Revelation" have

[42]

The Evidence of History

come from spirits whom we cannot identir
lie and cheat and contradict themselves, anc
adopt a method of communication which op
the door to a hundred errors and misapprehc
sions and which, in most instances, prov
morally and physically disastrous to the recipien
Experience, moreover, establishes the fact ths
these anti-Christian exposures generally come to
those who, for one reason or another, have al
ready parted with belief in the supernatura
truths of Christianity, and their experiences are
therefore, examples of that well-known "adapta-
tion to existing states of mind" for which the
spirits of the seance-room are famous. These
adaptations are calculated to win the favor and
\ confidence of the recipient. We all know today
that the spirits, as the late Dr. Lapponi put it,
"are pious with the pious . . . learned with the
lovers of learning, thoughtless with the gay, vul-
gar and gross with the vulgar." Mr. Stainton
Moses himself, through whose mediumship the
most authentic spirit-messages are claimed to
have been received, was constrained to write:

"Some spirits will assent to leading questions
and, possessed apparently with the desire to
please, or unconscious of the import of what they
say, or without moral consciousness, will say any-
thing. Such motiveless lying bespeaks a deeply

[43 1

The New Black Magic

ture. . . . Such an impostor, acting with
s of sincerity, must be as "satan clothed in
at."3

This being the case, how can we ever be sure
^at a credible and authoritative disclosure ema-
nates from this source ? How can any sane man
alk about a new revelation issuing from such
quarters and coming by such means ? Whenever,
)y God's permission, without any human initi-
itive, and by the operation of laws wholly un-
known to us, the soul of some saintly person has
been allowed to make a communication, the aim
has always been to confirm the truth of the
Historic Faith and to implore the recipient to
persevere in it. And, in my close intercourse
with the clergy and members of Religious Orders
in all parts of the world, I have never found that
any telepathic impression, calculated to affect this
Faith, has ever been received. On the contrary,
I have always found their sense of the truth of
the Historic Faith, and of their bounden duty to
hold it in all its fullness, to be exceptionally
strong. In individual instances the loss of this
Faith can always be traced back to the neglect of
prayer and to a loose and careless mode of life.
Logical reflection, therefore, and the weighing of
all the facts of the case, from the historic point of

3 Spirit-Identity.

[44]

The Evidence of History

view, exhibit the utter absurdity of the claim that,
by means of spiritistic practices, a new revelation
is in process of delivery. This claim is wholly in-
consistent with our ideas of the dignity and holi-
ness of God, and is altogether contrary to the dic-
tates of right reason. In view, therefore, of what
is now going on in the world we can but exclaim
with the Hebrew prophet :

"With desolation is the whole world made
desolate because no man thinketh in his heart."

[451

IV

THE EVIDENCE OF FACT AND
EXPERIENCE

THE EVIDENCE OF FACT AND
EXPERIENCE

In examining the subject under consideration in
the light of actual experience and of those facts to
which the modern reconstructionists of Chris-
tianity are strangely reticent in drawing atten-
tion, we concede, of course, the fundamental
claim of Spiritism. The phenomena observed be-
yond all doubt prove the existence and operation
of spirit-agencies independent of and apart from
the observer. In view of the abundant and strik-
ing evidence which we possess today, and which
is the result of long and severe sifting, we need
not waste our time in any contention with the
doubter. His doubt, for the most part, is not due
to superior intellectual acumen but to ignorance
of the facts, and all we can do is to refer him to
the recorded facts. If he then continues to doubt
he must either be afflicted with constitutional ob-
tuseness, or because the facts established are seen
to upset his accepted philosophy of life. We know
that there are some persons who do not want to
believe and whom no kind of evidence respecting
the spirit-world would convince. Our Lord no
doubt had such persons in mind when He said

[49]

The New Blacp: Magic

that "they would not believe though one rose
from the dead."

I have already gone over the whole ground in
my other books; I will therefore here content
myself with a single statement from the pen of
Dr. Venzano, an Italian physician, and a cautious
and experienced investigator of the phenomena
of many years' standing. He sums up his de-
tailed record establishing the independence and
objectivity of the manifestations observed in
these words:

"The duration of the apparitions, the perfect
agreement of the experimenters observing them,
the shadows they cast on the walls of the gas-
lighted room, all serve to disprove every
possibility of hallucination. One of the most
striking peculiarities of the manifestations ob-
served is that they appeared and remained
visible for some time in such brilliant gas-light
that it was possible, as Professor Morselli
observed, to read even the small print of a news-
paper." This surely is clear and should be con-
clusive.

It is a question, therefore, not of the reality
and objectivity of the phenomena, but of their
interpretation. What confidence can we be ex-
pected to place in the disclosures made by their
means ?

t5o]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

Sir Conan Doyle4 tells us that "this body of
fresh doctrine comes in the main through auto-
matic writing where the hand of the human me-
dium is controlled either by an alleged human
being ... or by an alleged angel. These written
communications are supplemented by a vast num-
ber of trance-utterances and by the verbal mes-
sages of spirits given through the lips of me-
diums. Sometimes it has even come by direct
voices. . . . Occasionally it has come through
the family-circle and table-tilting. . . . Some-
times it has come through the hand of a child."

From this statement an inexperienced or
partially-informed person might easily be led
to conclude that these disclosures come to us un-
sought for and uninvited — perhaps by some im-
pulse proceeding from God Himself, and by
means of some gift bestowed upon chosen in-
dividuals, not unlike the revelations and inspira-
tions imparted to prophets and apostles of old.

But this is, of course, an entire misapprehen-
sion of the facts of the case, as experience and
observation have established them. These com-
munications never come unsought for and by
normal and natural means. They presuppose

4 1 am quoting his words, not because his statements have
any specific value, but because they represent and sum up the
contentions of that class of experimenters who claim that, in
spiritism, a new revelation is in process of delivery.

[Si]

The New Black Magic

the cultivation of what we term mediumship.
And mediumship is not, as many writers would
wish us to infer, a natural gift but a certain men-
tal and physical condition which has to be dili-
gently developed and cultivated, and which is
really a morbid and abnormal state of the mind
and the body. It is beyond all doubt true that
any person can become a medium, provided he is
willing to submit his will and intelligence uncon-
ditionally and systematically to the invading
spirit, and allow his body to serve the ends which
the spirit has in view. The degree of medium-
ship attained depends upon the frequency of the
experiment and the mental and physical consti-
tution of the subject. In some instances this de-
velopment is very rapid because there is a natural
tendency to pass into the passive state; in others
the protecting barrier which nature has erected is
only gradually broken down and the development
is slow and labored. But, with entire willingness
and patience, the end can always be achieved.
This disposes of the absurd and wholly false as-
sertion and belief that mediumship is a gift from
God which must have been imparted for a wise
purpose and which we are consequently justified
in employing. To those who have witnessed the
repulsive struggles of even a developed physical
medium gradually "passing under control" there

[52]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

cannot be any doubt on the subject. And all
experimenters know that, in the case of mental
and subjective mediumship, true spirit-messages,
unadulterated by the subconscious activities of
the medium's own mind, are only possible when
the mind is entirely passive and its normal con-
scious operations are suspended. The familiar
complaint of the spirits is that they can achieve
so little because passivity is so imperfect. Mr.
Stainton Moses himself, of whom Sir Conan
Doyle tells us that he was the finest medium Eng-
land has produced, and through whom the most
credible spirit-revelations are believed to have
been received, tells us that messages were written
under various circumstances; "as a rule it was
necessary that I should be isolated and the more
passive my mind the more easy zuas the communi-
cation." The first fact, therefore, which we have
to recognize is the circumstance that the manner
in which the "New Revelation" is delivered is
1. A Process Contrary to Nature
All right-thinking men will agree that mental
health depends upon the unimpeded exercise of
our will-power and of our intellectual faculties.
The aim of all true education is to develop and
cultivate these to the very utmost and to enable
us to guard against anything in the least calcu-
lated to interfere with them. We do not think

[53]

The New Black Magic

much of the man characterized by a weak will
and easily swayed by the ideas and feelings of
others. The development of a strong personality
is unthinkable wherever the latter is the case.
Our very instincts warn us against the perils in-
cidental to any invasion of our personality from
without. This is most certainly true with respect
to the ordinary conditions of life and our inter-
course with our fellows — with the men and
women regarding whose aim and character and
disposition we are able to form some kind of
judgment. But how much more is this the case
with regard to agencies whom we cannot see, of
whose nature and disposition we cannot form any
adequate idea, and for the integrity of whose aim
and purpose we have only their own statements.
No man, thinking logically and correctly, would
submit himself to any such invasion of his per-
sonality, and the very aversion of the normal man
to the mediumistic process proves the existence
of the barriers and safeguards which nature has
erected. The circumstance that, in spiritistic
practices, these barriers have to be broken dowrn
gradually, and in most instances, with disastrous
consequences to the medium, is evidence that the
process itself is against nature.

Now it is an indubitable fact that such an in-
vasion of the personality, attended by the weaken-

[54 3

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

ing of the sense of responsibility, and of the
power to exercise the will and the judgment, is
the necessary and inevitable accompaniment of
the practice of mediumship. So certain is this
that even professed spiritists are constrained to
admit it and to utter warnings.

"It is this weakening of the sense of personal
responsibility," writes Sir William Barrett,5
"that constitutes, in my opinion, the chief peril
of Spiritualism. Hence your gates need to be
guarded with jealous care; even the level-headed
should walk warily, and the excitable and emo-
tional should have nothing to do with it; for the
fascination of the subject is like a candle to
moths, it attracts and burns the silly, the credu-
lous and the crazy."

And with that naiveness and self-contradiction
for which the scientific exponents of the new
Christianity are famous, Sir Oliver Lodge6 him-
self writes:

"Self-control is more important than any other
form of control, and whoever possesses the power
of receiving communications in any form should
see to it that he remains master of the situation.
To give up your own judgment and depend solely
on adventitious aid is a grave blunder and may

"On the Threshold of the Unseen.
•Raymond Or Life After Death. P. 225.

[551

The New Black Magic

in the long run have disastrous consequences.
Moderation and common sense are required in
those who try to utilize powers which neither
they nor any fully understand and a dominating
occupation in mundane affairs is a wholesome
safeguard."

But how this self-control and preservation of
the judgment are to be exercised by persons in
an unconscious or semi-conscious state, and with
respect to unseen agencies whose nature and aim
they cannot possibly determine, these men do
not tell us. And yet they would have us be-
lieve that a credible revelation can possibly be
delivered to us by such a perilous and irrational
method !

Sir Conan Doyle goes so far as to say that the
gifts bestowed on some of the Apostles and
spoken of by St. Paul in his First Epistle to the
Corinthians7 are identical with the phenomena
of mediumship, and indeed boldly asserts that the
early Church was "saturated with spiritualism."
But can a more grossly dishonest interpretation
of Holy Scripture be conceived? Can anybody
imagine St. Paul or any one of the Apostles sit-
ting en seance with a clairvoyant or writing
medium ? St. Paul does not say that the various
powers referred to are by operation of spirits but

T Chapter XII, 11.

[56]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

of the Spirit — this Spirit, according to the pre-
ceding verses, being the Spirit of God. The
powers displayed in modern mediumship are cer-
tainly not gifts by which the Spirit God operates,
but effects of a systematic development of a
faculty by which created spirits can work certain
marvels in imitation of those worked by the Spirit
of God.

But we have to recognize the further fact that
2. The Systematic Practice of Mediumship
Is Always Attended by Disastrous Con-
sequences, Mental, Moral and Physical.

This effect does not always manifest itself im-
mediately to the medium and the percipient, for
the simple reason already stated that the process
is a gradual one and that nature's barriers are
removed one by one.

In the case of the mental phenomena, such as
automatic writing, trance-speaking, etc., the
steadily increasing degree of passivity, varying
from a mere mind-impression to a state of com-
plete unconsciousness, in the course of time com-
pletely paralyzes the will of the medium and
makes him the helpless instrument and victim of
the spirit dominating him, who then infuses
his own ideas into the mind. The process is so
subtle that it is often barely recognized in its
initial stages, and the fact itself only becomes

[57]

The New Black Magic

apparent when the mischief is done and the
spirit's work is completed.

To produce the available evidence, illustrating
and confirming the truth of this statement, would
require the writing of a separate book. It has
been my painful duty, for the past twenty years,
to endeavor to bring relief to and save the victims
of modern scientific spiritism, and the cases with
which I have had to deal are practically identical
in their character. I can best describe the process
at work in the words of a well-known scientific
experimenter, who has the courage of his opin-
ions and who cannot be charged with preconcep-
tion on account of his religious belief. He is a
purely scientific student of the phenomena. Dr.
H. Carrington writes:8

"I know this progressive development well. I
have so many different accounts sent me from
different sources that I know each step of the
process perfectly. First, slow scrawls or
scratches obtained with difficulty and after long
waiting; then the formation of definite letters,
then the more rapid flow of the handwriting with
intelligent connection ; then personal remarks, an-
swers, conversations, lies, impertinence; then the
stage in which it seems hardly necessary for the
subject to touch the board at all; then the board

s The Problems of Psychical Research. P. 333.
[58]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

is discarded altogether and the pencil is substi-
tuted in its place. The writing now becomes still
more personal, the subject believes that the hand
writes, she comes to be dominated by it. Then,
if the subject still continues, rapid, furiously
rapid writing takes place; the desire to write is
constantly present; pain develops at the base of
the brain ; then the pencil is discarded and writing
is performed with any object which is handy — a
fork, a paperknife, etc., — or with the finger in
the air; finally the subject seems to intuit the
words before they are written out; this becomes
more and more intense until distinct auditory hal-
lucinations result; the patient listens to the in-
ternal voices and follows and believes what they
say; she loses sleep; insomnia sets in; a strange
light is seen in her eyes; all sense of proportion
is lost, the subject is completely wrapped up in
the internal voices and pays but little attention to
external affairs; she is completely dominated or
obsessed by the internal reverie ; to all intents and
purposes she has become insane.

"I doubt not that many hundreds of persons
become insane every year by reason of these ex-
periments with the planchette board, as the pres-
ent subject would have done had she not stopped
her experimenting in time. . . . The way in
which the board swore on occasions was extraor-

[59]

The New Black Magic

dinary and on several occasions it called Mrs*
C. and others names which they had never heard
till they saw them spelled out on paper and are
of such a nature that I cannot give them here."
(p. 375 et seq.)

The editor of one of our weekly publications
quite recently sent me the names and addresses of
three persons in one locality who had had to be
confined to the asylum by reason of spiritistic
practices, and respecting whom the attending
physician stated that "the use of the ouija-board
had brought about a state of dementia."

I can, on the grounds of my long and intimate
acquaintance with this aspect of the subject, con-
firm the literal truth of this statement and can
but add that I doubt very much whether the pro-
tective barriers thus removed can ever be entirely
replaced. The spirits are ready enough to come
but they do not go away quite so readily. In all
the cases which have come under my observation,
the automatic process had proved a destructive
one, the victim remaining subject to a recurrence
of the invasion on the slightest provocation, and
incessantly battling with the inclination to write.
Where this impulse is systematically yielded to,
as in the case of public automatic or inspirational
mediumship, the invading spirit ultimately par-
ages the normal thinking powers, dominates the

[6o]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

will and the sensory organism, until the mental
and moral powers of the subject decay and he
becomes an imbecile.

"I have," writes Sir Wm. Barrett, "observed
the steady downward course of all mediums who
sit regularly/'

One of the last cases of this kind which came
under my observation in England was that of an
intelligent young girl, into whose hands some of
these recent "scientific" books had fallen and who,
unaware of the peril and in all good faith, had
practiced automatic writing. The usual fatal de-
velopment had taken place. She appealed to me
when all other efforts to obtain relief had failed.
I did all I could to save her but, unfortunately,
only very partially succeeded. In two of her last
letters addressed to me she wrote :

1. "During writing I could not swear to being
quite conscious, for the pencil moves rapidly and
I lose the power of being able to stop it. Twice
it came out in some peculiar language and, the
last time, it was so disgusting that it was not fit
to read and I was very violently sick after it.
This makes me wonder if I am really conscious
all the time. I have striven against it but to no
avail. There come, at certain times, quick and
violent jerkings of the hand and arm and then,
as if by compulsion, I have to seize a pencil and

[61]

The New Black Magic

a bit of paper. It cannot be sin now as I have no
wish to do it. I also find that every action of my
life is controlled by one dominant spirit. Often
I sit and my astral forms itself into a most
hideous personality which sits in the opposite cor-
ner and grins and mocks me to distraction. I am
sorry you know of even worse cases, though it is
a little consolation."

2. "I am sorry and ashamed to report that
automatic writing has become habitual — not
through my fault, as I have struggled and strug-
gled against it. I find you are quite right —
obscene is scarcely the word to emphasize the ter-
rible nature of the revelations. It is, believe
me, quite against my natural inclinations when
normal; but I will not excuse myself. Suffice it
to say that I am really unable to help it."

Another correspondent writes :

"On the advice of a well-known authority on
Spiritualism the writer and his wife, who were
both told that they were mediums, attempted
automatic writing. Almost from the first it was
successful, and some very remarkable letters have
been received from this spirit and another. But
I think it only right to add that the language used,
though at times very intellectual and scientific,
was of such a character that we were compelled
to cease all communications with him. Spirit-

[62]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

ism is, alas! too true; but our present re-
searches have convinced us that it by no means
bears the angelic character ascribed to it by
spiritists."

In Modern Mystics and Modern Magic, Mr.
Lillie writes:

"Over and over again Mr. Stainton Moses (the
great writing-medium) has told me that his medi-
umship passed through one very grave crisis in-
deed. Evil spirits assailed him. His days were
perturbation and his nights were terror. Every
sense was assailed. The foulest stenches spread
through his bedroom. He tried the Indian Yoga
so far as to give up fresh meat and wine. This
only made matters worse. To an earnest clergy-
men all this created terrible doubts. Often and
often Mr. Stainton Moses thought his guides
devils from Hell."

If experiences such as these, of which one does
not often find records in the official accounts of
psychical research, were brought to the knowl-
edge of the public by our scientific exponents of
spiritism, would any sane man, I wonder, se-
riously consider the contention that, by means
of so perilous a method a new Revelation is in
process of delivery to the human race ? It seems
to me that only a person who has himself fallen
yictim to this method of operation, and whose

[63]

The New Black Magic

judgment is unbalanced and disordered, can ad-
vance such a claim.

With respect to the physical or objective phe-
nomena it is only necessary to state the ascer-
tained facts of the case and to let these speak for
themselves. They are so utterly and hopelessly
destructive of the popular interpretation of the
phenomena that spiritistic writers seldom refer
to them now, and when they do, they plainly inti-
mate that the best evidence in favor of the spirit-
istic theory must not be sought for in that
quarter. For the general public, however, the
phenomenon of materialization has the greatest
possible attraction and fascination and, in most
circles, it is regarded as the one most to be de-
sired and to be striven for. And the spirits
themselves invariably encourage this desire and
promise the phenomenon as a reward of strict
obedience to instruction and of entire conformity
to the conditions laid down by them. And as
materialization, under good conditions, compels
belief in the most skeptical mind, we cannot be
surprised that physical mediumship is regarded
as the summum bonum of all spiritistic practices.

I pointed out, years ago, in my earliest writ-
ings, that I was convinced that the spirits, in
order to produce perceptible manifestations in
the sense-world, withdrew from the physical

[64]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

organism of the medium some kind of vital force
or matter. In dark seances I had observed this
subtle matter issuing from the body of the sensi-
tive and I found traces of it on my earliest photo-
graphs. It was a notion, moreover, entirely in
keeping with assertions which I found in some of
the older books on Occultism. They speak of a
kind of spirit-vampirism which is in active oper-
ation in these experiments and which, in its fully
developed form, tends to endanger the very life
of the medium. Science at that time, of course,
dismissed any such statements as these with that
contemptuous disregard with which it dismisses
everything that does not bear the conventional
scientific impress, but which is in reality the re-
sult of ignorance. That same science has now
been compelled, not merely to admit the fact it-
self, but to put it on a true scientific basis. Ex-
periments, carried on in private laboratories,
under strict test conditions, and with the aid of
photography and of scientific instruments, have
established the existence of this force or fluid or
matter beyond all possibility of doubt, and have
shown clearly what the method is by which these
spirits act and how they manage to produce such
astounding phenomena.

This life-force or fluid or plasm as some ex-
perimenters term it (its nature and constituents

[65]

The New Black Magic

being at present unknown) is withdrawn from
the organism when the medium has passed into a
deep state of trance, and when it has become
sufficiently separated, the spirits manipulate it in
such a way that they are able, by its means, to
produce all the desired effects — from the moving
of a planchette or a chair or a table, to the shap-
ing of a human face or form.

But this power, so far from being a gift, is the
result of a peculiar morbid condition of the body
which can only be achieved by a long and patient
process of development and by a rigid obedience
to all the rules laid down by the spirits. It is
admitted by the latter that, the process being a
complex and difficult one, all those present must
be willing to aid the medium by yielding some of
their own vitality for the success of the experi-
ment.

That such an experiment would involve perils
to the medium and the experimenters must be
obvious to the least reflecting mind. How very
great these perils are can only be appreciated by
those who have witnessed the phenomenon and
who have observed the physical and mental con-
dition of the medium when recovering from the
trance state. Yet our modern exponents of
spiritism, knowing full well how these facts
must damage their cause and compel an in-

[66]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

terpretation of' the phenomena very different
from that which they advance, scarcely ever refer
to it. We get the facts only from those experi-
menters who work on true scientific lines and
who have, as yet, no interpretation of the phe-
nomena to offer.

But I would present the facts and let these
speak for themselves. Mr. Stainton Moses him-
self describes his condition during the process of
writing9 as follows:

"The hand tingled and the arm throbbed and
I was conscious of waves of force surging
through me. When the message was done I was
prostrate with exhaustion and suffered from a
violent headache at the base of the brain. Ask-
ing the cause, the spirits (the highly intellectual
Imperator group) replied: Headache was due to
the intensity of the power and the rapidity with
which it was withdrawn from you. You could
not write on such a subject without displaying
eagerness, for it is of the most vital concern to
those to whom we are sent."

A famous Italian medium makes the following
statement :

"I have been asked many times for my own

'This writing being in his case of a "direct" character (without
use of board or pencil held) partakes of the character of a
physical phenomenon.

[67]

The New Black Magic

explanation, but I have none. I only know that
I can feel the force; that it seems to flow out of
me and that I obtain it in part from others. When
the chain of hands is broken I can do nothing.
Strong men give me added power. The move-
ment of objects correspond to the movements of
my body and to the director of my will before I
have sunk into a deep sleep. After that, as I said,
I know nothing."

Dr. Hereward Carrington, who was one of
the scientific committee investigating the phe-
nomenon of materialization in Italy, some years
ago, reported as follows :

"During the experiments in Milan it was found
that the medium lost weight in a manner that
could in no way be accounted for. The medium
and the chair in which she was sitting were placed
upon the scales and their combined weight was
carefully measured. She was then watched care-
fully to see that she threw nothing away and also
to see that she derived no support from the sur-
rounding surfaces — the floor, etc. Nevertheless,
in the course of from twelve to twenty seconds,
she lost about seventeen and half pounds of
weight. At the fifth sitting a similar reduction
was observed under conditions that the investi-
gating committee considered perfect."

The late Professor Lombroso, who carried out
[68]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

a series of scientific experiments, under the strict-
est test conditions, observed the same reduction
of weight and stated that :

"Before the seance, she (the medium) weighed
176 pounds. With the appearance of a phantasm
this weight diminished to 83 and afterwards to
54 pounds. And the phantasm weighed the dif-
ference."

Sir Wm. Crookes, the eminent chemist, and one
of the earliest investigators of the phenomena of
spiritism, makes a statement to the following
effect :

"After witnessing the painful state of nervous
and bodily prostration in which some of these
experiments had left Mr. Home — after seeing
him lying in almost fainting condition, pale and
speechless, on the floor — I could scarcely doubt
that the evolution of psychic force is accompanied
by a corresponding drain on vital force."

But incontrovertible evidence of more recent
date, both as to the existence of the "psychic
plasm" and of the effect of its withdrawal from
the organism of the medium, is now available.
For a period of four years — -from 1910 to 1914 —
Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing, a famous Munich
physician, member of many learned societies and
author of many standard treatises on criminal
psychology and allied subjects, has carried on an

[69]

The New Black Magic

experimental investigation of the phenomenon
of materialization under conditions in which the
most skeptical and exacting mind can scarcely
hope to discover a flaw. In view of the fact that
Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing has had an acquain-
tance with the intricacies of mediumship extend-
ing over a period of 25 years, he must be regarded
as well qualified to impose conditions which
would constitute effectual safeguards against the
very possibility of deception and hallucination.
The Doctor, moreover, invited to this long series
of experiments various persons of high standing,
in whose judgment and powers of observation he
had confidence. Amongst these sitters were
medical, scientific and literary men and the well-
known Dr. Richet, Professor of Physiology in
the University of Paris.

The medium with whom he experimented re-
mained to the end at the Doctor's exclusive dis-
posal. She lived as a member of the family at
the house at which the greater number of the
seances were held and was therefore under con-
stant and watchful observation. It subsequently
became known that, at the instigation of persons
hostile to the investigators, her movements out-
side the house, too, had been shadowed by detec-
tives for a period of eight months.

In the course of his experiments, Dr. Von
[70]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

Schrenck-Notzing discovered that by covering an
electric light of 16-candle power with thin red
material, it was possible to obtain the phenomena
in fairly good light and to eliminate those well-
known unsatisfactory elements which are known
to attend the holding of dark seances.

Before each sitting the medium was subjected
to a rigid physical examination at the hands of
experts, and she had to exchange her ordinary
dress for one provided and prepared for the pur-
pose by the experimenters. The initial state of
trance was then induced by means of hypnotism.

In connection with some of these experiments
the Doctor employed no less than nine cameras,
thus obtaining excellent photographs of the phe-
nomenon in its progressive stages of evolution,
enabling him to test and verify the accuracy
of his personal observations. The plates on
which these impressions were obtained were
throughout manipulated by himself and were
finally developed in his presence. Stereoscopic
pictures, too, were obtained.

Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing's report shows his
final conclusions to be in agreement with those of
the earlier scientific experimenters. He tells us
that he watched and photographed the issue of
the mysterious life-plasm from the body of the
medium, the formation of abnormal arms and

[7i]

The New Black Magic

hands and faces, and that he was even able to do
what, so far as I know, nobody has ever done
before him — to secure a portion of the mysterious
substance and to submit it to microscopic exam-
ination.

The result of this examination would seem to
show that physical science has yet many problems
to solve in connection with these extraordinary
phenomena.

In my opinion the most interesting and evi-
dently most conclusive of these psychic photo-
graphs are not those on which the fully material-
ized spirit-form is exhibited, but those which
present various heads and faces and forms in the
process of evolution and therefore imperfect and
incomplete, the plate often having been exposed
before the full degree of development had been
attained. It is difficult to imagine how the evi-
dence for the existence and objective reality of
the plasm, and of the phenomenon of spirit-mate-
rialization by its means, could ever be made more
perfect or the conditions of observation more
rigid and conclusive.

But what is of surpassing interest to the seri-
ous student of the subject in this connection is
Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing's account of the effects
of these experiments on the physical and mental
organism Of the medium, and on this point the

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

Doctor does not leave us in any doubt ; his state-
ments are clear and emphatic, and they have
about them that fearlessness which is the char-
acteristic of all true science.

He writes as an unprejudiced investigator
whose sole aim and purpose is to record facts,
patiently and accurately observed and studied,
and who has no particular theory or interpreta-
tion to defend or to establish.

He tells us that, "while the phenomena were in
progress, the medium groaned and trembled and
that when she was awakened after a protracted
sitting, she was so seriously exhausted that she
had to be brought to bed." On one occasion, the
Doctor reports, "her loss of blood was consider-
able, she was tired and feverish, spoke with a
hoarse voice and coughed a great deal." At the
conclusion of another seance she fell from one
fainting fit into another, from which she could
only be awakened by the use of alcoholic stimu-
lants, and these fainting fits recurred three times
in the night. When the Doctor visited her the
next morning she was still in a dream-like state,
complained of pains in her breast and vomited
quite a wine-glassful of blood. As a rule, the
Doctor tells us, it took the medium two days to
recover from the nervous prostration resulting
from these sittings.

[73]

The New Black Magic

To what kinds of abuse the unfortunate victims
of a misguided scientific curiosity are apt to be
exposed is apparent from an incident recorded in
this report. On one occasion, Dr. Von Schrenck-
Notzing tells us, while an ordinary manifestation
was in progress there appeared suddenly a power-
ful and well-developed man's forearm with a
hand attached, which brutally seized hold of the
young woman and threw her with force into an
easy chair. She screamed and was so dreadfully
frightened and excited that the seance had to be
discontinued and it took her several weeks to re-
cover from the shock which her nervous system
had sustained.

To these statements I would add that the fit-
like shaking and trembling of the medium, as the
vital energy is being withdrawn, is a sight repul-
sive in the extreme, and is an evidence that a
process is at work which is against nature and
which is a violent removal of the barriers which
nature has erected. The depletion of the organ-
ism, resulting in utter physical exhaustion, neces-
sarily leaves the medium defenseless and an easy
prey to the spirit invading it. The entire process,
therefore, is a disastrous and destructive one, as
another student of the subject remarks: a rob-
bery, a deprivation, a retrogression, a deteriora-
tion. It results ultimately in a progressive loss of

[74]

The Evidence of Fact and Experience

memory, in inability to fix the mind or the will
consistently on any subject, in a steadily increas-
ing loss of self-control and moral balance, and
in that natural tendency to animalism which is so
well known a characteristic of mediumship.

I consider this aspect of the subject of such
vital importance, and bearing so strongly upon
the interpretation of the phenomena that, at the
risk of being tedious, I have quoted somewhat
fully from recognized and responsible scientific
authorities.

It is a suggestive circumstance that when Sir
Conan Doyle speaks of the abnormal signs ac-
companying the delivery of the new doctrines
from the beyond, he makes no reference at all to
those here described. But from statements such
as these, which certainly do not emanate from
writers who have a particular religious position
or creed to defend, it must surely be evident that
the mediumistic process is an inevitably perilous
and therefore an irrational and immoral one.
And yet, we are asked to believe, that by such a
process a New Revelation is being given to the
world!

[75]

THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE SCIENCE

THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE SCIENCE

It is a matter for congratulation that we have
amongst our modern scientific investigators of
psychical phenomena a number of men who,
although they are thoroughly convinced of the
reality and spirit-origin of the phenomena, never-
theless strongly repudiate the conventional inter-
pretation given of them and emphatically point
out the objections which true reflection and a con-
sideration of all the facts of the case must neces-
sarily raise against them.

Their warnings and reservations will be seen
to be indications of that truly scientific temper of
mind which examines a problem from every con-
ceivable point of view and which does not rashly
jump to conclusions on the ground of mere sur-
face evidence. It will be found, too, that the ma-
jority of these men have, in their study of the
phenomena, remained outside observers of them,
and have not themselves practiced mediumship in
any definite form. They have thus been able to
escape that subtle invasion of the mind by the
operating spirits which we now know to attend
all mediumistic practices, and which is so greatly
calculated to affect and to unbalance the judg-

[■79]

The New Black Magic

ment. Some of them, too, are no doubt men of
such forceful and positive mental constitution
that, in spite of their frequent assistance as
psychical experiments, they have not fallen vic-
tims to this well-known spirit-domination. It is
to such men alone that we can look for accurate
and reliable information on this complex and
thorny subject. It cannot be too frequently
pointed out that mediumistic practices are calcu-
lated to enslave and pervert the judgment of even
the most vigorous intellect, and that the subtle
influences exercised by these spirits upon the
habitually passive mind, account to a large extent
for the wholly illogical and grotesque interpreta-
tions of the phenomena which some experi-
menters are placing before the public to-day. At
a seance held in London not so very long ago, at
which a spirit had been masquerading as a de-
ceased friend of the family, but had finally been
driven to admit that he had never inhabited a
human body, the assertion was made that it was
contrary to the aims of the spirits to allow scien-
tific men to become convinced of the existence of
evil spirits. "They might draw certain inevitable
inferences," the spirit declared, "and become
Christians, thus defeating our aims." Does this
explain, one wonders, the vague answers to ques-
tions, the many tricks and contradictions which

[80]

The Evidence of True Science

cause the modern experimenter to be forever
learning" yet never to be coming to a knowledge
of the truth, but meanwhile to be keeping the door
of communication widely open?

My long and exhaustive study of this aspect
of the subject has thoroughly convinced me that
the victims of these spirit-operations are seldom
fully aware of what is going on. They are apt to
attribute their impressions to a sort of progres-
sive enlightenment of the mind due to a knowl-
edge obtained from a study of the phenomena,
while, in reality, they are due to the circumstance
that the mind and, of course, the judgment are all
the while being tampered with by the very intelli-
gences whose nature they are investigating, but.
who have made themselves the real masters of
the situation in the process. It is thus that sci-
ence is being led by the nose and that a credulous
world is being imposed upon.

On page 57 I have given an account of the
now available and reliable testimony as to the
effects — mental, moral and physical — of all forms
of mediumships, and the rightly thinking man can
scarcely fail to recognize that this is in itself
sufficient to demolish the claim that by such peril-
ous means a just and all-wise God is imparting
new and important religious truths to mankind.
Such an assumption would, beyond doubt, lessen

[81]

The New Black Magic

our reverence for God and be offensive to our
reason. But, as I know full well by what subtle
feats of mental gymnastics the defenders of
spiritism evade this difficulty and make light of it,
I propose to go still more fully into the matter
and to show what true science has to say when
the problem is regarded from yet another point
of view.

All serious students of psychical phenomena
are fully aware that the real crux of the spiritist
to-day is the question of identity — the necessity of
validly establishing the fact that the communicat-
ing spirit is really the individual he claims to be
— a person once known under such or such a
name in this world. Sir Oliver Lodge admits
that "the question of identity is a fundamental
one and that the controlling spirit proves his
identity mainly by the reproduction, in speech or
writing, of facts which belong to his memory and
not to the automatist" (medium).

Now, in weighing this statement in the light
of the knowledge which we possess to-day, we
have first of all to realize the fact that impersona-
tion of the dead by deceiving spirits is a well-
known frequent and admitted phenomenon in con-
nection with spirit-manifestations. There are in-
stances on record in which these cunning and
crafty beings have maintained the deception for

[82]

The Evidence of True Science

months and even years ; but have finally been com-
pelled to admit and confess the deception. In the
case of even the most accredited mediums, such as
Mrs. Piper, reserved for exclusive use by the So-
ciety for Psychical Research, such impersonations
were constantly taking place and had to be
allowed for.

Some experimenters are strangely reticent in
emphasizing the significance of these impersona-
tions and their manifest bearing upon the inter-
pretation of the phenomena, while the cool-
headed observer who has no pet theory to de-
fend, never ceases to draw attention to it. In
speaking of his experiments with Mrs. Piper, Dr.
H. Carrington reports to the Society for Psy-
chical Research:

"I gained the distinct impression throughout
the sittings that instead of the spirits of the per-
sonages who claimed to be present, I was dealing
with an exceedingly sly, cunning, tricky and de-
ceitful intelligence, which threw out chance re-
marks, fishing guesses, and shrewd inferences,
leaving the sitter to pick these up and elaborate
them if he would. If anything could make me
believe in the doctrine of evil and lying spirits it
would be the sittings with Mrs. Piper. I do not
for one moment implicate the normal Mrs. Piper
in this criticism."

[83]

The New Black Magic

Those more intimately acquainted with psy-
chical literature are familiar with the spirit who
called himself Dr. Phinuit and who, for many
years, masqueraded as a deceased Marseillais
physician through the mediumship of Mrs. Piper.
Few doubted the fact that it was an intelligence
independent of and apart from Mrs. Piper, — no
secondary personality — since he possessed knowl-
edge entirely outside the reach of Mrs. Piper's
mind. But respecting the identity of this being
with a deceased French physician, Mr. Leaf, of
the Society, wrote:

"His own word does not, in view of his moral
standard, apart from other considerations, carry
even the presumption of veracity — nor has a
single one of the numerous statements he had
made as to his life on earth proved capable of
verification. On the other side, his complete
ignorance of French is a positive ground for dis-
believing him and one which he has never been
able to explain."10

I have, in my various books, given striking in-
tances of this kind of spirit-deception which have
come under my personal observation in the course
of my researches and I will not increase the bulk
of this book by quoting them here. I will but add
that these impersonations are regarded by the

10 Proceedings of the Society. Vol. VI, P. 560.
[84]

The Evidence of True Science

more mentally robust among psychical re-
searchers in so serious a light that Dr. L. P.
Jacks, LL.D., D.D., President of the Society for
Psychical Research in 1917 and Editor of the
Hibbert Journal, was constrained to make the
following reservation in his Presidential Ad-
dress :

"Take the question of imposture. Mediums
are not the only impostors. How about the com-
municators? Are they masquerading? You can
have no absolute proof that there is no imposture
on the other side. I think that the whole meaning
of personal identity needs to be very carefully
thought out and considered before we begin to
produce evidence in favor of personal identity."

In the writings of Sir Conan Doyle himself
we come upon so singular an admission as this:

"Guessing on the part of the controlled there
might be — there sometimes was — and occasion-
ally there were direct impersonations ; but that is
part of what we might expect — at any rate it is
part of what we got." But if this be so, what be-
comes of the "New Revelation" of which these
masqueraders claim to be the transmitters?

Now these remarkable and admitted instances
of spirit-imposture lead to two necessary and in-
evitable inferences.

1. They demonstrate the fact that these spirits
[85]

Xhe New Black Magic

have access, under certain conditions, to a great
deal of information respecting the characters and
lives of deceased personalities.

2. They make it abundantly manifest that we
can never, in view of this circumstance, be certain
that the spirit communicating is what it claims
to be and that its disclosures are of any value.

Mr. M. Maeterlinck, in the effort to discover the
source of the information possessed by the spir-
its, has conceived the notion of a kind of "cosmic
mental storehouse" in which the records of all
human lives are preserved and upon which spirits,
getting in touch with the right kind of vibrations,
may be able to draw for the purpose of these im-
personations.

"We are compelled to recognize," he writes,
"that there must exist somewhere in this world
or in others a spot in which everything is known,
in which everything is possible, to which
everything goes, from which everything comes,
which belongs to all, to which all have
access, but of which the long- forgotten roads
must be learned again by our stumbling feet."11

My own experiments and observations led me,
years ago, to the conclusion that, whatever may
be said of Maeterlinck's cosmic storehouse, the
main sources of information drawn upon by the

uThe Unknown Guest. P. 82.
[86]

The Evidence of True Science

spirits are the subconscious minds of the medium
and of the sitters. Recent psychological research
has definitely established the fact that "the sub-
conscious mind of man is a kind of vast store-
house wherein are preserved, seemingly without
time limit and in the most perfect detail, memory
images of everything we have seen, heard or
otherwise experienced through our sense organs.
It is also a kind of workshop for the facile ma-
nipulation of ideas including even the elaboration
of complicated trains of thoughts."12

Or, as Dr. Morton Prince, another psycholo-
gist, puts it:

"We should not overlook the fact that among
mental experiences are those of the inner as well
as of the outer life. To the former belong the
hopes and aspirations, the regrets, the fears, the
doubts, the self -communings and wrestlings with
self, the wishes, the loves, the hates, all that we
are not willing to give to the outer world and all
that we would forget and would strive not to
admit to ourselves. All this inner life belongs
to our experience and is subject to the same law
of conservation." 13

But experiment has also established the in-
dubitable fact that, in the passive state, when the

"Psychology and Parenthood, by H. Addington Bruce.
"The Unconscious. P. 85.

[87]

The New Black Magic

conscious normal activities of the working mind
are suspended, this subconscious storehouse is
thrown open and its contents become accessible
to spirit-intelligences. And the extent to which
it can then be drawn upon by them and its con-
tents manipulated, depends upon the degree of
passivity attained and upon the experience of the
particular invading intelligence.

With these facts clearly before the mind the
thoughtful reader will have no difficulty in real-
izing the vast possibilities which are at the serv-
ice of these crafty intelligences and to what an
extent the investigator can be deceived and
tricked. In some instances the manipulation of
these mind-images or phantasms is so ingenious
that the most critical observers are completely
taken in, and it is only when the most searching
tests are applied and every statement made is
rigidly scrutinized, that the trick is discovered
and the imposition is exposed.

In this respect, too, however, nature would
seem to have erected certain barriers and to
have provided for the venturesome student of
the subject certain safeguards which are to be
found in the circumstance that there are limi-
tations to the powers of these spirits. They can
do many wonderful things, but they cannot do
everything and the cloven hoof can always be

[88]

The Evidence of True Science

detected if one remains on the alert and preserves
a rigidly critical attitude of mind. I dis-
covered this many years ago and my own conclu-
sions were confirmed by those of the late Pro-
fessor Wm. James, of Harvard, which he ex-
pressed to me in the course of a most interesting
conversation which I had with him a year or so
before his death. "It seems to me," he said,
"that these strange spirit-beings are under some
kind of inhibition and that, wonderful though
their powers are, they are certainly limited."
This limitation or inhibition consists in the cir-
cumstance that they cannot always read and in-
terpret these mind-images accurately and that,
in their manipulation of them, they are apt to
make disastrous mistakes. They will here or
there draw a wholly mistaken and impossible in-
ference from a clearly discerned fact or inci-
dent, or they will misread or misplace the phan-
tasm— attributing an event read in the mind-
record to one life while in reality it belongs to
another. I will give two actual occurrences in
illustration of the truth of this statement.

When I was engaged, years ago, in a series of
experiments carried on in the family circle and
without the employment of a public medium, a
being manifested at our seances who claimed to
be the spirit of a person whom I had known inti-

[89]

The New Black Magic

mately in life. The accompanying phenomena
could leave no possible doubt that it was the case
of an individuality wholly independent of and
apart from the young lady acting as a medium.
He referred to events and circumstances which
could not by any chance be known to her and
once or twice to matters of which I too could
have no knowledge. He came to us night after
night, each time bringing proofs of his identity
of his own devising, and these were, in various
respects, so startling and convincing that the most
skeptical members of the circle became con-
vinced of his identity. In fact they became irri-
tated at my own mental attitude which was that
of patient scrutiny and observation. For some
reason which I could not explain myself I was
not convinced and again and again demanded
fresh proofs of identity. One never-to-be-forgot-
ten night I caught him in a manifest misstate-
ment the bearing of which I alone could appre-
ciate. It related to an event which could not pos-
sibly have happened in his life. In reply to fur-
ther carefully constructed questions, the truth of
the statement made was insisted upon, and the
statement itself still more fully elaborated.
When I felt sure that the spirit could no longer
evade his statements or, by any of the well-
known tricks, attempt a plausible explanation, I

[90]

The Evidence of True Science

pointed out the manifest falsehood of the state-
ment, and unexpectedly charged him to tell me,
in God's name, whether he was in reality the
spirit of my deceased friend. My question was
followed by an ominous silence and, upon being
repeated, yielded an emphatic No! — a reply
which, I need not say, left all the circle gasping.
Upon my promise not to send him away and
cease the inquiry he declared his willingness to
tell us how he had effected so marvelous an im-
personation. "I obtained all the needed informa-
tion/' he declared, "from your own silly thought-
boxes. You sit there like a set of fools, in a
passive state of mind, by zvhich I am enabled to
read your minds as you read your New Testa-
ment."

It was this remarkable occurrence which put
me on the right track in my search for the main
sources from which these spirits draw their in-
formation, although it must be admitted that the
subconscious minds of the sitters could not, in
this case, be the sole and only source of infor-
mation.

When I landed in New York, a few years ago,
I was invited to an interview with the late Dr.
Funk, of the publishing firm of Funk & Wagnalls.
He had read my books and was impressed with
the evidence which I had presented, but, as a

[9i3

The New Black Magic

confirmed spiritualist, he made light of my warn-
ings and reservations and thought, no doubt, that
they were largely due to my religious beliefs and
convictions. Still it was evident to me that he,
too, had his misgivings. He maintained, how-
ever, that he had established the identity of his
deceased wife to his entire satisfaction. She
communicated with him, he told me, through all
the mediums he visited, proved her identity by
certain signs agreed upon, and spoke intimately
of the most private affairs of her supposed past
earth-life. Dr. Funk and I parted excellent
friends who agreed to differ. A year or so later,
on my return to New York, I rang up my friend.
He expressed his great delight at the opportunity
of meeting me again, and begged me to visit him
at once as he had a great deal to tell me. I found
him in a state of great depression, quite ready
now, however, to consider my view of the matter.
His story was as follows : He had visited a me-
dium who could not possibly know him, and who
had most certainly never seen him before. His
spirit-wife had communicated at once and had
given the usual sign of identification, continuing
a conversation which had been broken off else-
where. In the course of this conversation she had
had occasion to refer to her death, but in a man-
ner which startled Dr. Funk, and, for the first

[92]

The Evidence of True Science

time, aroused his suspicion. He inquired cau-
tiously: "Tell me again under what circumstances
did you leave your body." She replied, "Why this
question ? You surely know" ; and she then pro-
ceeded to describe what she claimed to be the
manner of her death, but what in reality corre-
sponded to that of his deceased mother, his wife
having died in an entirely different manner and
from quite a different complaint. Here too mani-
festly the masquerading spirit had "tapped" the
subconscious mind of poor Dr. Funk but had,
in the manipulation of the phantasm secured,
made the most startling mistake.

So far as the evidence obtainable from spirit-
photography is concerned, we have it on the high
authority of the late Mr. Traill Taylor, for years
president of the British Royal Photographical
Society, that "psychic pictures" can be obtained
under the strictest test conditions. Mr. Taylor
gave to the Society an interesting account of his
own experiments in which he detailed the method
of operation adopted and the precautions taken
by him. I have myself obtained such pictures
and have given illustrations of the safeguards
employed in my book, "The Dangers of Spirit-
ualism." But Mr. Taylor agrees with me that
such pictures are quite worthless as aids to es-
tablish spirit-identity. He calls them thought—

[93]

The New Black Magic

or mind— or memory — pictures or projections,
and traces them back to the sub-conscious mind
of the medium or of the experimenter.

He states, in confirmation of the correctness
of this view, that pictures have been obtained of
the conventional angels with wings, as the ordi-
nary mind has been led to imagine them.

It is further confirmed by the circumstance
that on some of these pictures there appear, with
the spirit-form of their departed owners, de-
ceased pet dogs and cats and parrots, for whom a
continued existence is claimed in the other world,
but which are manifestly images drawn from the
memories of the medium or of the sitters and
manipulated by the spirits.

Striking evidence in support of this contention
is given in the great work of the German physi-
cian already referred to, in which he presents us
with a detailed and illustrated account of his ex-
periments extending over a period of four years.

"Spirit-photographs" were obtained by him
which, upon examination, were found to be slight-
ly modified presentations of pictures which the
medium must have seen and which had certainly
appeared in a popular French newspaper.

Some years ago the deceased British Cardinals
were very much in evidence in London seance-
rooms. The late Cardinal Newman especially

[94]

The Evidence of True Science

was believed to appear regularly at a house well
known to me and I have seen several post-mortem
photographs of him. But I found that they all
differed very considerably and that this difference
could be traced back to the image of the late Car-
dinal which the individual observer had in his
mind, or to a published photograph of him which
he had seen.

We have, furthermore, photographs on which
the materialized spirit appears as he existed at
various ages in his physical body, in one case as
a child or youth, in another as a grown-up per-
son, the presentation evidently corresponding
with the peculiar mind-image which the experi-
menter had retained of the deceased.

I have in my possession a photograph obtained
in a city which I had never visited before and
on which there appears by my side a fairly good
picture of a deceased member of my family ; but,
alas ! for Sir Conan Doyle and his theories, there
is on the same photograph also the image of a
person well known to me who is still living, but
not as she is now, an elderly lady, but as I knew
her years ago and as I best remember her — a
young married woman. Proof positive this,
surely, that these images are not photographs of
the living dead as they now exist in their new
spirit-bodies, but materialized phantasms taken

[95]

The New Black Magic

from the subconscious memories of surviving
relatives and friends. The masquerading spirits
clearly cannot always distinguish the mental
phantasms of the dead from those of the living,
and it is here where the critical and experienced
investigator gets on the track of the deception.
It will be seen from these occurrences alone
what is possible in this direction and how utterly
worthless all this material is as evidence of the
fact and nature of the new spirit-body or of
spirit-identity. But, as I have said before, it is
practically demonstrated that the passive sub-
conscious mind is not the only source from which
these spirits draw that information which en-
ables them to pose so successfully as the spirits
of the dead. I am convinced that any fact or
incident or human characteristic which has in
any wise become extant — either by way of writ-
ing, or verbal expression, or photography, or
indeed by any outward sign or manifestation —
is accessible to spirit-intelligence and can, under
certain conditions, be made to serve the end in
view. Indeed, so well is this recognized by
serious students of the subject that they admit
that we know today of nothing that could estab-
lish the identity of a communicating spirit. It
is seen that if such identity is ever to be estab-
lished, it is for the spirits to furnish the evidence

[96]

The Evidence of True Science

in a form and by a method of their own devising
and which can leave no doubt in any mind.

"Do they" (the spirits) "not yet know," writes
Mr. Maeterlinck,14 "that the sign which will prove
to us that they survive is to be found not with us
but with them, on the other side of the grave?
Why do they come back with empty hands and
empty words? Is that what one finds when one
is steeped in infinity . . . ?"

"All things considered, as in other attempts
and notably those of the famous medium Stainton
Moses, there is the same characteristic inability
to bring us the veriest particle of truth or knowl-
edge of which no vestige could be found in a liv-
ing brain or in a book written on this earth. And
yet it is inconceivable that there should not some-
where exist a knowledge that is not ours and
truths other than those which we possess here
below."

"The spirit Grocyn, for instance (communi-
cating through Stainton Moses), furnished cer-
tain information about Erasmus which was at
first thought to have been gathered in the
other world, but which was subsequently dis-
covered in forgotten but nevertheless accessible
books."

On one occasion Mr. Stainton Moses received a

u Fortnightly Review, Sept.-Oct., 1913.

[97]

The New Black Magic

series of messages from musical composers, giv-
ing the principal data of their respective lives as
they may be found in every biographical diction-
ary, with hardly anything more. Their peculiar
nature excited his surprise and, on inquiry, he was
informed by his guides, "that these were in fact
messages from the spirits in question, but that
they refreshed the memory of their earthly lives
by consulting printed sources of information."
In commenting upon this incident the late Mr.
F. W. H. Myers wrote: "It is obvious that this
is to drop the supposed proofs of identity alto-
gether. If any given spirit can consult his own
printed life, so also presumably can other spirits,
and so perhaps can the still incarnate spirit of
the automatist himself. In one of his more re-
cent works15 the spiritist Professor Sir Wm.
Barrett naively remarks :

"If we had no other evidence than automatic
writing (the chief means of delivery of the "New
Revelation," according to Sir Conan Doyle) we
might conclude that the manufacture of puzzles
and enigmas is the sole faculty and employment
of discarnate spirits."

There are many forms of mediumship, too, in
which extraneous spirit-action need not be as-
sumed, and where telepathy may conceivably ex-

10 Psychical Research. P. 245.

[98]

The Evidence of True Science

plain the phenomenon. It is evident from cases
on record that we are here, too, confronted by
vast possibilities, not only on the part of the sub-
conscious mind-activities of the medium, but also
on that of the spirit-operators. But they also
show us to what an infinite amount of self-decep-
tion and misinterpretation these phenomena are
liable.

In a recently published book16 the following
very interesting and suggestive incident is re-
corded: A lady, Miss A., on her way to a clair-
voyant medium, called on Mrs. B., whose mind at
the time was very much occupied with some im-
portant matter, of which, however, she made no
mention to her visitor. Miss A.'s seance was so
unsuccessful that, on her way home, she again
called on Mrs. B. to tell her of her disappoint-
ment. Mrs. B., on asking for particulars, found
to her amazement that, while all the visions given
by the clairvoyant medium had absolutely no
meaning for Miss A., they had unmistakable ref-
erence to the matter occupying her (Mrs. B/s)
mind. The visions had, moreover, been ushered
in by a Chinaman in gorgeous apparel, and Mrs.
B. had that morning, on passing the Chinese Em-
bassy, observed a Chinaman, gorgeously arrayed,
coming down the steps. Does not an incident of

16 Immortality.

[99l

The New Black Magic

this kind throw a vast amount of light on the
nature and origin of these phenomena?

Now with these well-established and incontro-
vertible facts before the mind, we shall be in a
position to rightly estimate the value of the evi-
dence adduced by Lodge and Doyle in favor of
spirit-identity. It will be seen at a glance that
it is wholly and utterly worthless.

Let us first of all take the case of Miss Julia
Ames, "who told Mr. Stead things in her own
earth-life of which she could not have had cog-
nizance," but which were shown "when tested
to be true."

There is, in the first place, the more than prob-
ability that many of these things, if not all of
them, were really embedded in Mr. Stead's sub-
conscious mind but wholly forgotten by him.
(Miss Ames was a personal friend of Mr. Stead
for many years.) In their reproduction, there-
fore, they would appear to Mr. Stead's normal
mind as new matter.

But, in the second place, the very circumstance
that the truth of the matter produced could be
tested by inquiry is evidence that it was in some
form extant, i.e., contained in some book, or rec-
ord, or article, or in some other living mind and
was therefore accessible to spirit-intelligence.
We have seen from the instances cited above that,

[ ioo]

The Evidence of True Science

as such, it has no value whatever as a proof or
evidence of identity.

In the case of Raymond recorded by Sir Oliver
Lodge, the same argument applies respecting "all
sorts of details of his home life which his own
relatives had to verify before they found them to
be true." Such details could easily have been
drawn from the subconscious mind of some
member of the Lodge family or from some dis-
tant mind, or from information extant in one
form or another. I am persuaded that, years ago,
Sir Oliver Lodge would himself have rejected
any such disclosures and communications as re-
liable evidence of spirit-identity. And I may add
that very few of the well-informed members of
the Psychical Research Society would be found
to accept it today.

As regards the photograph of his son, "no copy
of which had reached England," the act of its
impression on the sensitive plate was an occur-
rence not only manifestly extant, but also known
to a number of persons retaining this knowledge
in their minds. For the spirits surrounding Sir
Oliver Lodge, who was constantly sitting in
seances and who was known to be incessantly
searching for evidence of identity, it was prob-
ably an easy thing to obtain this information
from the mind of one of his son's fellow officers

[101]

The New Black Magic

who was one of the group photographed, and to
convey it to the medium in London and thus to
Sir Oliver Lodge. Again, hosts of spirits
were, beyond doubt, witnesses of the taking
of the photograph, any one of whom would
have been able to impress the mind of the
London medium with the fact. And a public
man like Sir Oliver Lodge, whose picture has
appeared in a hundred newspapers, could never
claim to be wholly unknown to any particular
medium.

I have, in the course of my own researches,
found repeatedly that intimate conversations,
carried on in the open air and at some distance
from the seance-room, had been overheard and
were intelligently commented upon on our return
and before we could ask any questions. While
in Australia, some years ago, some of my doings
and movements were made known to a lady in
England who was then deep in spiritistic re-
searches, and whom I have since been able to save
from the asylum.

On one occasion, when a fog detained me in
London and the members of our circle were anx-
ious to ascertain whether I would be able to be
present at the sitting, I was accurately located by
the spirits, and the arrival at and departure of
my train from the various stations and the mo-

[ 102]

The Evidence of True Science

ment of my arrival at the house were given with
the most astonishing correctness.

It will be seen, therefore, what extraordinary
possibilities are within the reach of these spirits
and that incidents such as those cited by Doyle
and Lodge cannot by any possible chance be taken
as proofs of identity.

One is astonished to find at this hour of the
day serious-minded men, acquainted with the in-
tricacies of the subject, citing as evidence of
identity communications from a spirit wholly un-
known to them, but whose actual existence and
the mode and place of whose death have been
verified by inquiry. We are daily reading in the
newspapers of the lives and deaths of persons
unknown to us and, whether interested or not,
these incidents are absorbed by our subconscious
minds and become permanent possessions of our
mental storehouse. We have no conscious recol-
lection of them and do not recognize them when
they are presented to the working mind. What is
easier for a spirit than to extract them from the
subconscious storehouse and to dramatize them
in a form that has the most vivid appearance of
reality. One would imagine that the most super-
ficially informed student of the phenomena would
discern the clumsiness of the trick, and would
refuse to accept that kind of thing as evidence of

[ 103]

The New Black Magic

identity. But it is wonderful what men will get
themselves to believe when the mind is predis-
posed in some particular direction or fascinated
by some plausible theory.

There is a further consideration which I
should like to submit to the thoughtful reader.
It is well known today that, for the production
of true manifestations, a considerable amount of
intelligence and experience are called for on the
part of the operating spirit. Subtle forces have
to be manipulated, barriers have to be broken
down, and mental and physical obstructions on
the human side removed. The spirits admit that
they themselves are learners and experimenters
in a region bristling with difficulties and that it
is by no means an easy thing for them "to get a
message through" to our plane of life, as they
put it.

Now is it not a remarkable circumstance that
while many of the "higher" spirits claim to have
been long at work at this kind of thing with ad-
mittedly limited success, a young officer who, in
his earth-life, had taken no interest in the sub-
ject, should so readily and so soon after his death
have found the means of easy communication
with his people. One wonders how and where
he learned to manipulate the subtle and complex
forces which made such communication possible.

[ 104]

The Evidence of True Science

But it seems to me that I cannot better sum up
the entire argument of this chapter than by quot-
ing a striking paragraph from the pen of the late
Dr. Orestes Brownson, who had himself experi-
mentally observed and studied the phenomena
and whose book, The Spirit Rapper,17 is perhaps
one of the best we have on the subjtct.

"Undoubtedly the supposed dead bring pre-
tended proofs of their identity, but these proofs
are in no wise conclusive. They remind you of
peculiarities which the dead and you alone knew ;
the mysterious pencil imitates his writing. But
the devils were invisible witnesses of those pecul-
iarities; doubtless they can skilfully counterfeit
handwriting, they that can work prodigies much
more extraordinary. And they know enough of
the human heart to know that, in persuading you
a loved one is there conversing with you, they
will secure a better hearing, when, with pretended
simplicity, they boldly declare that Catholic teach-
ing is deceptive. These invisible interlocutors take
the most august names, such as that of St. Louis
and even of St. Paul, and under these names,
they contradict the faith of St. Louis and the
teaching of St. Paul, and repeat, like parrots, the
humanitarian phrases of our modern philoso-
phers. But history shows that there have been

17 P. 360.

[105]

The New Black Magic

authentic apparitions of the glorious dead at-
tested by miracles ; not one of them declared that
he was mistaken when he believed and taught
Catholic dogma during his mortal life. What
matters it, then, that these late comers, who, tak-
ing at random the names of our saints and those
of the heroes of free-thought, emphatically pro-
claim some errors resuscitated before them by
a dozen scribblers notoriously unbelieving."

In a work18 by the French astronomer, Profes-
sor Flammarion, who has devoted years of study
and research to this subject, we meet with this
significant statement:

"As to beings different from ourselves — what
may their natures be? Of this we cannot form
any idea. Souls of the dead? This is far from
being demonstrated. The innumerable observa-
tions which I have collected during more than
forty years, all prove to me the contrary. No
satisfactory identification has been made. That
souls survive the destruction of the body I have
not a shadow of doubt. But that they manifest
themselves by the processes employed in seances,
the experimental method has not yet given us
absolute proof. Up to this day, I have sought
in vain for certain proofs of personal identity
through mediumistic communications."

18 Psychic Forces.

[ 106]

The Evidence of True Science

I have thus placed before the reader the re-
corded results of true and unbiased research in
the sphere of psychical science, and from these
it will be evident to all reasonable minds that
there is not a shadow of ground for placing any
confidence in the statements and claims of Sir
Oliver Lodge and Sir Conan Doyle.

[107]

VI

THE EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN
THOUGHT AND EXPERIENCE

THE EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN
THOUGHT AND EXPERIENCE

I have on pages 19 et seq. briefly summarized
what may be regarded as the essential principles
of the "New Revelation," so far as they can be
gathered from the statements of Lodge and
Doyle, and from the more or less vague utter-
ances of the "higher" spirits of the seance-room.
I now propose to examine these principles some-
what more closely — in the light of the teachings
of Historic Christianity and of Universal Chris-
tian experience. It will also be necessary to
quote, by way of introduction, a few scientific
authorities whom we can scarcely regard as the
champions of Christianity.

With the implied claim that there is anything
new about disclosures of this kind, or about their
mode of delivery, I have already dealt in the pre-
ceding pages. It will have been seen from the
facts and arguments there adduced that the me-
diumistic process and mediumistic communica-
tions are in no sense a recent breaking-down of
a dividing wall between the two worlds, seeing
that such a wall, in the spiritistic sense, has
as a matter of fact never existed, all nations and

[in]

The New Black Magic

races having, from times immemorial, been ac-
quainted with modes of communication between
the worlds seen and unseen. It was all along "the
man in the street" who possessed the right kind
of knowledge and the scientific who was the ig-
noramus. "It came to be recognized," as the
late Professor Alfred Russel Wallace justly ob-
served, "that the belief of the uneducated and un-
scientific world rested on a broad basis of alleged
facts which the scientific world scouted and
scoffed at as absurd and impossible." It is mere
arrogance, therefore, which makes these men
pose before their fellows as the discoverers of
new and wonderful psychic laws and secrets.
And the implication that

1. The "New Revelation" is (in any sense)
divine and authoritative will be seen to be equally
absurd and fallacious. So long as those who
make this claim are themselves constrained to
admit "that all the accounts of the life beyond the
grave differ in detail," that opinion is not always
uniform over yonder any more than it is here,
and "that we have unhappily to deal with absolute
coldblooded lying on the part of wicked and mis-
chievous intelligences," they cannot possibly talk
about a Revelation. That can never by any
chance be a Revelation which comes by messen-
gers whom we cannot identify, who lie and cheat

[112]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

and contradict themselves, and who leave us, with
respect to those matters on which we most desire
light and information, in a state of hopeless per-
plexity and bewilderment — to say nothing of the
numerous moral and physical evils attending its
delivery. We can, therefore, safely dismiss this
silly claim with the contempt which it deserves.

When Sir Conan Doyle and the "higher" spirit
further state that it has become certain — with
ever fuller knowledge — that

2. Man has never fallen because he has always
been evolving, through the man-like ape, and the
ape-like man, we are brought face to face with
another of those bold pronouncements which are
paraded before the half-educated as the certain
findings of modern science, but which are in real-
ity nothing but assumptions and, at best, wholly
unproved and unprovable theories.

I do not in the least claim to possess any spe-
cific knowledge on a subject admittedly bristling
with so many difficulties and presenting so many
varied and complex problems even for the spe-
cialist. But I do claim to have that acquaintance
with it which is within the reach of all who keep
in touch with our current literature and who
follow the trend of true scientific thought respect-
ing these matters. But all this current scientific
literature goes to show that, in recent years, a

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great reaction of ideas has taken place with re-
gard to the evolutionary theory and that, where
it is accepted at all, it has undergone such modi-
fications that its original characteristics can
scarcely be recognized. There is, in any case, so
much diversity of opinion on the subject amongst
the most renowned scientists that nothing can
be asserted with any degree of certainty, and that
consequently the notion that the body of man
has gradually risen through evolutionary proc-
esses out of the animal world cannot be spoken
of as the necessary result of fuller knowledge.
I submit the following statements to the reader's
serious consideration :

Dr. Bumueller, a recognized specialist in anat-
omy, declares:

"The testimony of comparative anatomy is de-
cidedly against the theory of man's descent from
the ape." (Mensch oder Affe., p. 59, Ravens-
burg, 1900.) And he goes so far as to add:
"Even the possibility of a connecting link is
disproved by the tendency of apes and semi-
apes to diverge more and more in the course
of their higher development in anatomical
structure from the human type." (Op. cit.,
p. 91.)

Commenting on Klaatsch's views expressed
at the Anthropological Congress of Lindau in

["4]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

1899, Johannes Ranke, the great biologist, justly
observed :

"Whilst a charming picture of the past and
possibly of the future is being shown us, and
whilst a fanciful design is being carried out in
all directions, we are as a rule in quest of facts,
not theories. The facts, however, upon which
Herr Klaatsch claims to base his ingenious the-
ory, do not at present exist, and I must protest
against his assuming that they have been fur-
nished by zoology and palaeontology any more
than by anatomy. . . . All else is still a matter
of hypothesis, and if anyone attempts to use it
in order to produce a finished picture the result is
a work merely of the imagination."

In the closing address delivered at the Fifth
International Congress of Zoologists, August 16,
1901, Professor W. Branco, Director of the Geo-
logical and Palaeontological Institute of Berlin
University, speaking on the theme "Fossil Man/''
set forth the following conclusions:

"1. No human remains of the tertiary period
have been discovered. 2. Man appears suddenly
in the quaternary period unheralded by transi-
tional forms. 3. Diluvial human remains
abound, but diluvial man appears at once as a
true human being, possessing in most cases a
cranium that would do credit to the most intellec-

[ii5]

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tual of modern men, without long ape-like arms
or long ape-like canine teeth, a genuine man from
head to foot."

What the great Rudolph Virchow said some
twenty years ago is as true today as it was then :

"According to the studies that have been made
prehistoric men did not resemble monkeys any
more than men of the present day. . . . We can-
not teach, nor can we regard as one of the results
of scientific research the doctrine that man is de-
scended from the ape or from any other animal."

One of the most eminent of present-day biol-
ogists, Dr. Hans Driesch, writes:

"If new species came into existence by the
process of gradual and imperceptible transforma-
tions covering periods of thousands and millions
of years . . . nature would contain numerous
intermediate types . . . bearing the structural
characteristics partly of the new and partly of the
old species. . . . My most careful investigations
and study of the forms of extinct and extant life
have led me to the conclusion that intermediate
types never existed. No such types have been
found in nature. The classes and families of
plants and animals have always been distinctly
separated as they are now, and they have always
formed distinct systems as they do today. There
never was a class or family of plants or animals

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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

which bore the characteristics of two different
species. The Darwinian theory of Organic Evo-
lution is therefore in open contradiction to real-
ity. . . . :' (Philosophy of the Organic, vol. 1,
p. 268.)

Dr. Driesch is positively scathing in his criti-
cism of Darwinism, regarding it as already scien-
tifically dead:

"It (Darwinism) is," he says, "a matter of his-
tory, like that other curiosity of history, Hegel's
philosophy. Both are variations on the theme
'how to lead a whole generation by the nose,' and
neither is very likely to give ages to come a high
opinion of the latter part of our century."

"For men of clear intellect, Darwinism has
long been dead and the last argument brought
forward in support thereof is scarcely more than
a funeral oration in accordance with the principle
de mortuis nil nisi bonum (say nothing but good
of the dead), and with the underlying conviction
of the real weakness of the subject chosen for
defense." (Biologisches Zentralblatt.)

Many more authorities, expressing similar
views, might be quoted; but these will suffice to
show what Sir Conan Doyle's assertion is worth
and what good grounds we have for challenging
its legitimacy. As in the psychical sphere of in-
vestigation, so here, too, his wish or natural lean-

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ing is manifestly father to his thought, and his
cool assumption as scientific fact of what is
mere speculation is but one of those well-known
maneuvers with which so many of our pseudo
and amateur scientists have made us familiar.
"I am absolutely convinced," writes a French
scientist,19 "that a man is, or is not, an evolution-
ist, not for reasons drawn from natural history,
but by reason of his philosophical opinions."

But even if the development of the human body
out of preceding animal forms of life could ever
be shown to be an established fact of science, it
could in no wise touch or invalidate the truth of
the primitive doctrine of the Fall. It is a truth
which belongs to man's soul, or spirit-life, and the
soul begins where evolution ends. Spirit cannot
grow or be evolved out of matter, and evolution
can only take place in the sensitive powers of
man — in his organs. But the soul is above the
organs and no animal, however closely approach-
ing the form of man, can be called man unless
there be in it a spiritual and immortal soul. And
this soul, as all accurate thinkers agree, must be
God's special and independent creation. It will
thus be seen that there is not, and never can be,
in this part of Doyle's arguments, any valid ob-
jection to the Christian doctrine of Original Sin

"Prof. Yves Delage.

[Jl8]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

and the Fall of Man, since the doctrine belongs
to a sphere in which the physical scientist is not
competent to pronounce judgment. "There might
have been ten Falls and the thing would have
been quite consistent with everything which we
know from physical science." "Nothing," forcibly
observes Mr. Chesterton, "can be, in the strictest
sense of the word, more comic than to set so
shadowy a thing as the conjectures made by the
vaguer anthropologists about the primitive man,
against so solid a thing as the sense of sin. Sci-
ence knows nothing whatever about prehistoric
man, for the excellent reason that he is prehis-
toric. . . . There is no tradition of progress;
but the whole human race has a tradition of a
Fall. Amusingly enough, indeed, the very dis-
semination of this idea is used against its authen-
ticity. Learned men literally say that this pre-
historic calamity cannot be true because every
race of mankind remembers it. I cannot keep
pace with these paradoxes."20

When we turn to the authoritative Christian
doctrine of the Fall and to the facts of confirma-
tive Christian experience, we are met by evidence
in its favor which is simply overwhelming. But
unfortunately in this respect, too, modern scien-
tists and philosophers are apt to make the wildest

20 Orthodoxy.

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possible misstatements and to display an amount
of ignorance which would cause amusement were
it not that it is so often attended by such direful
consequences to serious and truth-seeking souls.
A single reference to a primer on Catholic dogma
would dissipate such ignorance. I am not writing
a book on Christian doctrine and cannot, there-
fore, go very deeply into the matter ; but I will,
for those seriously interested in the subject,
briefly quote from a standard work21 what the
Church's teaching is on this point:

"All the evils and all the harm done to the hu-
man soul through the Fall and through Original
Sin are evils by comparison with a higher good.
Original Sin cannot be discussed in itself; it has
to be stated by comparison, and the term compari-
son is the high and privileged state in which man
was created originally; we must keep our eyes
fixed on that ideal state if we are to understand
Original Sin. . . . When God created man he
put into the human soul a gift called technically
the gift of original justice. . . . That gift (whose
supernatural psychological value could not be
overstated) made the human will perfectly sub-
ordinate to the will of God, established it in per-
fect harmony with God; the loss of it brought
about a falling back of the soul into itself, which

:i The Human Soul, by Dom Ansgar Vonier, O.S.B.
[ I20]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

need not be positive rebellion against God, yet
which, by comparison with that adhesion of the
will to God, looks like rebellion. . . . It is a pri-
vation because God meant the soul to have this
gift. It is in a state of enmity to God (again by
comparison) because without this gift the hu-
man will cannot rise above itself with an unselfish
preference for God.

"The absence of this gift is truly called sin be-
cause the absence is owing to the free act of the
human will, the will of Adam. . . .

"Death of the body, the flesh that wars against
the spirit, and the spirit that wars against the
flesh, the infirmity of the will-power, and the ig-
norance of the mind, that make temptation so
dangerous, all that dismal condition of human
nature bewailed so eloquently by St. Paul and
St. Augustine, are not Original Sin. They con-
stitute the Fall ; for we know that Baptism which
destroys Original Sin, does not alter the sad con-
ditions of our nature. . . .

"Thus Baptism is the end of Original Sin and
yet it is not the end of the fallen condition of
man.

"Now the spirit part of man does not fall un-
der heredity. The mode of transmission, then,
which alone is recognized by St. Thomas and
Catholic theology generally is simply the fact of

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one human being coming from another human
being through the laws of generation, or more
simply the fact of our being the children, through
successive generations, of Adam."

Now we may surely assert with confidence that
the entire moral history of man and the very ex-
istence of Religion today bear witness to the
truth of this doctrine. The very circumstance
that a teaching so hateful to human pride and
self-conceit, and so unpleasantly opposing itself
to our natural cravings and inclinations, should
be found in all human races, and that it should
have resisted all efforts to eradicate it, can only
be explained by the fact that it is one of the
earliest inheritances of the human family. It
has, of course, found different modes of expres-
sion in different races and in different systems of
religion; but only the deep underlying sense of
its truth could have caused it to survive all the
corroding influences of human passion and all the
antagonistic forces of human science and philos-
ophy. Man believes in the Fall, not merely be-
cause he finds it difficult to overcome certain ani-
mal propensities, but because he has in himself
the distinct consciousness of a higher, but lost,
and yet recoverable good, and because he knows
that he sins in view of a clearly recognised higher
obligation.

[122]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

It is, as a matter of fact, on the scientific, not
on the Christian and theological side that the real
difficulty of the matter lies; for no unchristian
scientific theory has yet satisfactorily explained
how this universal and persistent consciousness
arose and how we are to account for its sur-
vival. And that it does survive, even in the mod-
ern scientist, we need not doubt for a moment.
His constant occupation with the problem is evi-
dence of that fact. We do not trouble ourselves
to incessantly refute an assertion which we thor-
oughly believe to be groundless. God never any-
where leaves Himself without a witness, we may
be sure. The modern man may ignore and slight
and obscure the witness; but he cannot possibly
succeed in permanently silencing it. De Maistre
wisely observed : "I do not know what the heart
of a villain is like. I only know that of an up-
right man and it is frightful."

It is interesting to observe that, in this respect,
the true philosopher and student of human nature
is on the side of the Catholic theologian, even
though he may not himself profess the Catholic
faith and use a theological phraseology. In the
last of his interesting lectures on "The Varieties
of Religious Experience," delivered in Edinburgh
in 1901 and 1902, the late Professor W. James
went to the very root of the matter when he

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inquired : "Is there under all the discrepancies of
creeds a common nucleus to which they bear their
testimony unanimously, and ought we to consider
the testimony true?" And he replies "that there
is a uniform deliverance in which all religions
meet — namely, an uneasiness which is a sense that
there is something wrong about us as we natu-
rally stand and that this experience is literally
and objectively true as far as it goes." And, "the
solution," he continues, "is a sense that we are
saved from the wrongness by making proper con-
nection with the higher powers."

It is difficult to conceive of a sounder scientific
basis for the Christian doctrine of the Fall of
Man and of his redemption through Jesus Christ.

But I may not linger over this deeply interest-
ing aspect of the subject. There is no writer who
has so forcibly summed up this universal witness
of the human heart to the truth of this Christian
doctrine as the late Dr. Brownson. I feel con-
fident that his words will find an echo in every
mind that has still the power of thinking accu-
rately and of judging rightly. "No man," wrote
Dr. Brownson,"22 can analyze the facts of human
experience without finding them prove incontest-
ably that our destiny, whatever it be, lies above
the level of our present natural powers. Our

82 Necessity of Revelation, Brownson's Review, 1848.
[124]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

race then must have once possessed powers, nat-
ural and supernatural, which it does not possess
now, and therefore powers which it must have
lost or forfeited. All facts of experience as well
as universal tradition bear witness to some great
catastrophe, to some terrible revulsion, which
man at some remote period must have suffered.
The soul appears to every nice observer, to retain
traces of a lost grandeur, and to be filled with an
undying regret for what once was, but is no
longer hers. She appears to be tortured by her
reminiscences. Even before illumined by faith,
she regards herself as expelled from her early
home, as an exile from her native country and a
sojourner in a strange land. She bears with her
the secret memory of a lost paradise, for which
she sighs, and with her recollections of which, dim
and fading though they be, she contrasts what-
ever she finds in the land of her exile. What is
the poetry of all nations but the low wail or wild
lament of the soul over her lost Eden — the music
in which she expresses the wearisomeness of the
banishment and her longing to return and dwell
again in the sweet bowers of her early youth, of
her childhood's home?

"Hence, also, the universality of sacrifice
proves the universality of the belief in the primi-
tive Fall, that man has fallen from his original

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state, and now lies below the level of his destiny,
without the ability to attain it."

The "scientific" objection to the truth of the
Christian doctrine of the Fall having thus been
shown to be wholly groundless, and the doctrine,
on the contrary, to be resting on a secure and im-
pregnable foundation, it will be seen that Doyle's
contention that

3. The Incarnation and Sufferings and Death
of Jesus Christ were in no sense an atonement
for the sins of man is equally fallacious and un-
tenable. Indeed, we may assert the very con-
trary and maintain that, granting the truth of the
former, the presumption is altogether in favor of
the truth of the latter. If man has fallen and be-
come separated from God, and if he cannot, by
the powers of his own nature, raise himself to
that union and friendship with God for which
he was destined, it is reasonable to conclude that
God would furnish a means by which this can be
effected and the destiny achieved. And, since
that destiny is above nature, it is equally reason-
able to conclude that the means of restoration
would be above nature — supernatural.

One cannot warn sufficiently against those sys-
tems of Christian thought which claim to be es-
sentially "rational," against these "perfect recon-
ciliations between science and religion." Such

[126]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

systems harbor a fundamental fallacy and indi-
cate their purely human origin — the man-made
article in religion. There must manifestly be
mysteries in a divine revelation. Truths apper-
taining to the supernatural order, although not
contrary to reason, can scarcely be expected to
be fully within the reach of reason. If we could
discern them by the conclusions of the intellect
we would be within the sphere of science, not of
religion, and the best educated man, however
base his character and unsatisfactory his life,
would then have the clearest perception of divine
truth. And, what injustice this would be to the
poor and handicapped and illiterate amongst
men!

It is indeed Divine Wisdom which hides the
mysteries of the spiritual world from the proud
and arrogant, and reveals them to the poor in
spirit — to those of humble faith and of a peni-
tent and contrite heart!

Now one would imagine that if there is any-
thing certain in this world, it is the fact that the
dogma of the Incarnation and Sufferings and
Death of the Son of God, as an atonement for the
sins of man, is a fundamental and integral part
of the primitive Christian Revelation. All Scrip-
ture, all history, all Christian experience, bear
witness to it, and with it Christianity itself must

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certainly stand or fall. It would surely be an
utterly hopeless task to seek to prove that this
dogma is the result of later theological specula-
tion. How could we account for the preparatory
sacrificial system of the Old Covenant, for the
remarkable prophecies having their fulfillment in
the death of Christ, for the implicit and explicit
statements of Christ Himself, of all the Apostles,
for the belief and teaching of the earliest pro-
fessors and saints and martyrs of the Christian
faith, of the entire Christian world in all ages.
If human evidence and testimony can establish
any fact at all this fact surely is established.

"The Person of Jesus Christ," writes a thinker
of our own time,* "is the central idea of Chris-
tianity and the most precious object of its faith.
Whence arises the unique value of this idea? Is
it as the preacher of an elevated morality that
Jesus is dear to his followers ? Plainly not. The
Love of God and of one's neighbor, compassion
for every living creature, has been preached with
much eloquence by other religions; not in these
things shall we find the distinctive feature of the
religion of Christ. What renders it unique is
its conception of Salvation personified in one who
was both divine and human — Jesus. It is the
idea of the God-man."

*Prince Eugene Troubetzkoy in the Hibbert Journal of April,
1918.

[128]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

To quote, by way of confirmation, the teach-
ings of Christ and of his Apostles would mean
quoting the better part of the New Testament.
I will here confine myself to but a few statements
which summarize these teachings and which, with
any other interpretation than that stated above,
will be seen to be wholly incomprehensible and
meaningless.

We read in St. Matthew, xx, 28 :

"Even as the son of man is not come to be
ministered unto, but to minister and to give his
life a redemption for many."

In St. Matthew, xxvi, 28:

"For this is my blood of the new testament
which shall be shed for many unto the remission
of sins."

And the Apostolic testimony is equally
clear and may be summed up in these refer-
ences :

Coloss. 1, 19 and 20:

"Because in him it hath well pleased the
Father that all fullness should dwell. And
through him to reconcile all things unto himself,
making peace through the blood of his cross, both
as to the things that are on the earth and the
things that are in heaven."

I. St. Tim. ii, 5-6:

"For there is one God and one mediator of God
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and men, the man Christ- Jesus, who gave himself
a redemption for all.''*

I. St. Peter, i, 18-19:

"Knowing that you were not redeemed with
corruptible things as gold and silver . . . but
with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb
unspotted and undented."

And equally clear and unequivocal is the wit-
ness and profession of the earliest confessors of
the Faith, of the saints and martyrs and doctors
of the first two centuries of the Church.

St. Ignatius calls himself Theophorus — that is,
God-bearer, because he bears Jesus in his heart.

St. Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, says to
his judges- "How shall I hate Him whom I
adore, my King and my Saviour?'"

St. Vital exclaims: "Lord Jesus, my Saviour
and My God, vouchsafe to receive my soul."

In the writings of Tertullian, Origen, Clement
of Alexandria, St. Irenaeus, St. Justin, etc., we
find such testimonies as these: "Everywhere
Christ is believed, Christ is adored. Believe Him,
O man Who is God and Man, Who suffered and
is adored as the Living God."

But literally endless would have to be the quo-
tations if one were to attempt to deal with this
aspect of the subject in anything like an adequate
manner. Works, specifically presenting the evi-

[130]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

dence, must be consulted for this purpose. So
overwhelming, indeed, is the evidence that per-
verseness and blindness of mind, or crass igno-
rance, can alone account for the attempt to cir-
cumvent it, or to explain it away, and, with entire
justice, writes a distinguished medical confrere
of Sir Conan Doyle23:

"Now this (Christianity as a moral system
only) I hold to be as pernicious as it is absurd.
If Christ was only a great human teacher, what
did He know more about God or morality than
any other man who might have arrived at his
knowledge by ordinary processes? What could
He know more than you or I? He may have
inferred or have guessed, but what knowledge
had He ? . . . It is not in the moral teaching of
Our Lord that the great power of Christianity
lies, but in the belief that He did for men that
which man could not do for himself — the belief
that He died for you and me and in some mys-
terious manner made God and man at one. I
have no power to theorize on this great fact, but
I am sure that history teaches that it is faith in
Christ, a personal Christ, who died for us men
and for our salvation, that has given the power
to Christianity and has moulded the life of the
world. Would men have gone to the stake, or

23 Sir Russell Reynolds, Bart, M.D. Essays and Addresses.
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to the lions, or the dungeon, for a moral teach-
ing? Would they have sung psalms in dying
agonies for a moral teaching? Would crusades
have been made for a mere idea ? No, it has been
for the belief in what He did and is doing at the
right hand of God that men have been willing,
nay, eager, to die."

It is abundantly clear, then, that it is to Christ
as the Divine Saviour and Redeemer, not to
Christ as the moral teacher or exemplar, or
higher spirit, that the marvelous transforming
effects of Christianity are due. And what are
these effects, briefly stated, as history and ex-
perience display them before our eyes:

1. Christ saved the decaying Roman world
from corruption.

2. He laid the foundations of a new and true
civilization.

3. He created numerous works of charity.

4. His doctrine enabled the best and wisest of
men to attain to the highest and noblest life.

5. It created saints and martyrs innumerable.

6. It was, and is today, man's one true source
of consolation in life and in death.

These facts, this transforming effect in the
world's life of the belief in Christ's redeeming
death, no sane man can possibly deny; but the
problem which presents itself to the reflecting

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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

mind is : how are we to account for it ; how came
this belief to be so firmly and persistently estab-
lished in the human heart?

Very little reflection will show that few of
those who first professed this belief after the
death of the Apostles, and who laid down their
lives for it, had seen or heard Christ. They
learned the doctrine from the oral teaching of
others, or from written documents. But docu-
ments were costly and not plentiful in those days ;
few, moreover, could have been able to read and
decipher them; the collected records which we
possess today and which we call the New Testa-
ment did not as yet exist. Towards the close of
the Apostolic age, when most of the witnesses of
Christ's miraculous works had died, verification
must have been extremely difficult, and, at best,
such verification would only have been human
and therefore, in itself, imperfect and fallible
testimony. And yet, century after century, in
uncounted numbers, strong men and delicate
women, indeed mere children, gladly and will-
ingly died as witnesses for the truth of this doc-
trine— submitted themselves to the most extreme
forms of suffering and of pain. Whence was
their belief, their unwavering and unfailing as-
surance? We have but the choice between two
alternatives. Either God Himself, in a miracu-

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lous way, and in fulfillment of the promise that
the Holy Spirit would lead into all truth bore di-
vine and confirming witness which could leave no
doubt, or the best of men, in spite of the action
of the Holy Ghost, fell, immediately after the dis-
appearance of Christ, into the grossest error,
misunderstood and misinterpreted His teachings,
and committed the sin of idolatry — adoring and
worshipping as God a mere created being and
teacher.

And God, Who by a single operation of His
power, could have prevented this lapse, allowed
this thing to be done, looked on while the best and
noblest of His creatures shed their life-blood for
a monstrous misconception, and, mark it well,
by means of this misconception regenerated and
saved a world!

If this be conceivable, we might well ask with a
learned Catholic psychologist24: Is it a rational
universe if the moral life of mankind be founded
on an illusion? Can the holiness of the world's
saints, the virtues of its best heroes, the moral
life of the mass of mankind, have had their source
and origin, their never-failing food and support,
in one huge hallucination?"

Or, as another writer puts it: "There is no
God in Heaven if man could conceive and exe-

u Rev. M. Maher, S. J. Psychology. P. 536.
[134]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

cute, with full success, the gigantic design of ap-
propriating to himself supreme worship and
usurping the name of God — if he could, while
plunging the world into idolatry, at the same
time regenerate it !"

Are we not here face to face with an insuper-
able difficulty and is it not an infinitely greater one
for these innovators and reconstructionists than
for us who firmly hold and profess belief in Christ
the Divine Redeemer and Saviour of the world?
Is it not for them to solve this strange problem
if they can ? Would not acceptance of their view,
rightly considered, undermine the very founda-
tions of all religion and destroy, in the logical
and seriously reflecting mind, all belief in an all-
knowing and all-wise God? For if Doyle and
Lodge and the "higher" spirits are right, is not
God daily and hourly continuing to tolerate a ter-
rible delusion, allowing the best of men to find
solace and comfort and hope in a palpable lie —
in a gross error and misconception ? Or will any
man presume to say that dying soldiers and
sailors and the sin and sorrow-stricken of
the world derive comfort and consolation
from a perusal of the records of the life of Christ
— from His moral teachings ? Is it not the Cruci-
fix for which they clamor — the sign visibly em-
bodying the fact and truth of that redeeming

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death which alone has made the forgiveness of
sin, the union of the soul with God, the hope of
a happy immortality, peace of mind and true con-
solation, here and now a living reality and cer-
tainty ?

Fancy reading the beatitudes and the moral
precepts of Christ to a man who is dying, whose
life is spent, who cannot possibly carry those pre-
cepts into practice, but who regrets his misspent
life, is contrite and penitent, and craves to be rec-
onciled to God! Would it not be mere mockery
to show such a man what his life might and
should have been ?

How very clearly and conclusively does human
experience, the instinctive perceptions of the
awakened human soul, confirm the truth, nay,
the burning need of this primitive Christian doc-
trine, and demonstrate the fatal error in which
these New Revelation men have entangled them-
selves and in which they are striving to entangle
the world!

"There is," wrote the late Mr. W. E. Gladstone,
"a fairly long history behind the orthodox inter-
pretations, and we cannot, in modesty, suppose
that the tendencies of thought in our own genera-
tion necessarily outweigh the experience of the
centuries."

And if Christ be divine, how can any man pre-
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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

sume to be able to estimate the real nature and
degree of His sufferings, and put them on a level
with the sufferings of any ordinary human crea-
ture. All human estimates must surely be at
fault in such a matter as this. We know how
keenly sensitive natures can suffer, not only on
account of their own sins and the consequent
pangs of conscience, but on account of the sins
and miseries and sorrows of others. Intensify
this sensitiveness of nature a thousandfold, and
the amount and complexity of such suffering and
you will get a good deal nearer to the truth. It
is just conceivable that the physical sufferings
of Christ, of which Doyle speaks so lightly, great
though they were, were not the greatest part of
the anguish which He endured on the Cross.
Mind and soul-suffering, as all the world knows,
may be much keener and much more hard to en-
dure than pain of body. But, if we once grasp
the thought that, in some way not understood by
us, there were concentrated in Christ's conscious-
ness, and in the fullest form, all the manifold sins
and vices of mankind, and the agonies and mis-
eries of human life consequent upon them, we can
form some slight conception of what those suffer-
ings were, and how widely they must have dif-
fered from the sufferings of any individual hu-
man being.

1 137 ]

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We have, as a matter of fact, some faint anal-
ogy to this in certain well-established facts which
recent psychical research has brought to light.
We know today that a spirit can become con-
scious, not only of the life-history, but also of
the thoughts and emotions of a number of people
assembled in a room at a given time, can intelli-
gently comment upon them, and thus give proof
of the possession of this knowledge. And if this
be so in the case of a created and limited being,
whatever its nature, how much more can it be
conceived to be so with One Who was uncreated
and unlimited and, in this respect, so different
from ourselves.

But, quite apart from these considerations,
it was surely possible for God, for the accomplish-
ment of the Divine Redemption, and for that
expiatory work for which Christ appeared in the
world, to cause Him to experience in His human
nature all those agonies of mind and body to
which our fallen and shipwrecked race is subject.
How can any man presume to pass judgment on a
matter so utterly beyond our limited human per-
ception and understanding? The human intellect
manifestly becomes very cloudy as soon as it
touches on the portals of infinity.

Sir Conan Doyle's assertion that "our
churches are half empty, women her chief sup-

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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

porters, both the learned and the poorest classes,
in town and country, largely alienated from
her," need not detain us long. It is, of course, an
obvious and palpable untruth — so far as the
Roman Catholic Church is concerned. The
churches which are more than half empty, which
have become mere entertainment bureaus and
cheap variety shows — in which not even many in-
telligent women are supporters — are those in
which Sir Conan Doyle's or similar kinds of
Christs are preached.

The buildings of the Catholic Church in all
countries, in which, as every Catholic knows, the
true Historic Christ, the Divine Saviour of the
World, is preached, and in which His sacraments
are validly administered, are so crowded that it
is often difficult to provide adequate accommoda-
tion and that additional provision has to be made
in various ways. And any man can at any time
convince himself that these crowds are composed
of the learned and unlearned, of rich and poor —
in many instances of men far in excess of women.

I can, in this respect, speak from an extensive
and unique personal experience. I have, in the
course of my lecturing work, visited many coun-
tries, have had opportunities of studying Catholic
activities in Europe, in the Australian Colonies,
the West Indies, and in South America. I have

[i39]

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three times crossed the North American conti-
nent, staying in many cities, both large and small ;
never have I fulfilled my duties in a half empty
church. Wherever the congregation was a small
one, it was due to the circumstance that the
local Catholic population was small, or that the
church had not long been built.

I am writing these lines at a Religious House
in the heart of the city of Chicago, and adjoining
a large and beautiful church, of which the lower
portion is also used for divine services. There
are ten Masses celebrated in these two churches
every Sunday, commencing at five o'clock a. m.
At each of these Masses more than eight hundred
persons are present, so that between eight and ten
thousand people hear Mass in this church alone
every Sunday. And the clergy tell me that this
applies proportionately to the churches of the
city and indeed to those of all the States.

And who has not heard of the marvelous and
steadily growing activities of the Church, in an
endless variety of forms, and in every direction?
Consider, on the other hand, the utter barren-
ness and impotence of the unitarian church in
all countries.

One is simply amazed at the unblushing im-
pudence with which responsible men impose their
falsehoods upon the ignorant masses, and with

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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

which they seek to bolster up their wholly illogical
and impossible theories.

When we now turn to the Apostolic Writings
themselves and see whether they throw any light
on this aspect of the problem, we come upon in-
formation which is quite startling and which is
certainly calculated to make even the most ardent
spiritist pause and reflect. For, even if we for
the moment disregard the claims to inspiration
of these Apostolic Writings and go the full
length with the New Revelation men, the import
of these statements assumes but a greater sig-
nificance— at least for every serious student of
the subject and every really reflecting mind. In-
deed, on the assumption, as Sir Conan Doyle
maintains, that the early followers of Christ prac-
ticed Spiritism and received intimations from the
other side, the case is so strong against him that
he has literally not a leg left to stand upon. For
what spirit could it have been that caused these
Apostolic men to prophesy that this denial of the
truth of the doctrine of the Incarnation would
surely come one day and that, so far from its
being a higher and truer conception of things, it
was to be regarded as the very spirit of anti-
Christ?

Twice in his book Sir Conan Doyle tells us that
mischievous and lying spirits no doubt exist, and

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that we must therefore test or try the spirits ; but,
like all these text-mongers, he does not quote the
text in its entirety, for it goes on:

"Because many false prophets are gone out into
the world. By this is the Spirit of God known.
Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ
is come in the flesh is of God. And very spirit
which dissolveth Jesus (or that confesseth not
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, as the au-
thorized version has it) is not of God; and this is
anti-Christ of whom you have heard that he
cometh and he is now already in the world."25

What the Apostle means by "coming in the
flesh" is abundantly clear from the Apostolic
Writings and cannot be disputed by any man.
This prophetic utterance and warning, therefore,
is a condemnation, root and branch, of all that
Doyle and his co-reconstructionists contend for,
and of all that the "higher" spirits of the seance-
room assert. But can a more flagrant misuse and
misapplication of a text be conceived ?

In another part of Holy Scripture the con-
demnation is equally clear and the warning
equally emphatic. In the first epistle of St. Paul
to St. Timothy, we read :26

"Now the spirit manifestly saith that in the

25 St. John IV, 1-3.
28 Chap. IV, 1-2.

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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

last times some shall depart from the faith, giving
heed to spirits of error and doctrines of devils,
speaking lies in hypocrisy and having their con-
science seared, forbidding to marry, etc., etc."

"If you believe not that I am he," exclaims
Christ Himself, "you shall die in your sin."27

Again, "The son of man when He cometh
shall he find, think you, faith on earth?"28

The Apostle St. Paul writes to the Galatian
converts :

"... There are some that trouble you and
would pervert the Gospel of Christ, but though
we or an angel from heaven preach a gospel to
you besides that (or any other than that, as the
authorized Protestant version gives it) which
we have preached to you, let him be anathema
(accursed).29

With these remarkable utterances, I can well
leave this part of my argument to the judgment
of those whose minds are not wholly blinded by
fundamental misconceptions and who are still
accessible to the appeals of fact and of truth.
And, by way of a very earnest and personal
appeal to all into whose hands this book may fall,
I would say in the words of the Apostle St, Paul :

" St. John VIII, 24.

28 St Luke XVIII, 8.

29 Chap. 1, 7, 8.

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"... Keep that which is permitted to thy
trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words,
and oppositions of knowledge falsely so-called
which some promising (or professing) have
erred concerning the faith.30

The teaching of the "New Revelation" finally
is that.

4. Death is not a terminus fixing man's destiny,
but that his moral education and evolution con-
tinue indefinitely, and that all that can be asserted
is that there is a temporary penal state which be-
comes the means of development and progress,
etc.

This statement, it must be admitted, is the
very trump-card of the "New Revelation," as it is
indeed that of many forms of modern non-Cath-
olic and non-Christian religious thought and phil-
osophy. However much the disciples of these
new cults may differ on other points of teaching,
they are always in remarkable agreement on this
point — "that Hell drops out altogether" — that
there is really nothing much to be feared respect-
ing the soul's destiny after the death of the body.
But should not this very consensus of opinion, in
the midst of so much divergence, arouse our sus-
picion? Do we not here trace the workings of
the Zeitgeist — of the unrestrained and , mis-

80 1 St. Tim. VI, 20, 21.

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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

directed human intellect which is forever beating
its wings against walls of brass? The argu-
ments urged against the true Christian doctrine
of Hell invariably base themselves upon the sup-
posed claims of human reason and upon the want
of proportion between the shortness of life and
the eternal duration of punishment — upon the
love and justice of an all-merciful God. But it
is in reality the craving of the modern man to
be free from a law which he instinctively per-
ceives to be at work in the moral universe, and
which alone effectively restrains his intellectual
pride and arrogance, and puts a check upon the
indulgence of his perverse appetites and pas-
sions.

In order to abrogate this law, therefore, he re-
sorts to the most cunning feats of mental gym-
nastics and empties the clearest and most em-
phatic pronouncements of Christ of their obvious
and legitimate meaning. Indeed, there is prob-
ably no dogma of the Catholic Church of which
such foolish and frivolous things have been said
and written and on which there is such loose and
illogical thinking as on that of Eternal Punish-
ment.

The remarkable thing is that no one has ever
been known to find fault with the eternity of
Heaven — with the unchanging happiness and

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bliss of the Good, of the Saints and Martyrs of
Christ's church. The very men who denounce
the eternity of Hell would be offended if we
merely suggested the idea that the joys of Heaven
are not eternal. They would certainly declare
it to be a defect in God's moral government of
the world, and in His provisions for the true hap-
piness of man, if the Saints could be conceived
to be in a state in which it is still possible for
them to change their minds, and from which they
may lapse some time or other. For true happi-
ness is necessarily associated with the notion of
a goal reached — of an end attained — of a victory
permanently won after the long and arduous con-
flict of life. But, as St. Augustine very logically
remarks :

"To say in one and the same sentence life
eternal shall be without end, punishment eternal
and Hell have an end were too absurd; whence,
since the eternal life of the saints shall be with-
out end, punishment eternal too shall doubtless
have no end to those whose it shall be."31

One is here reminded of the witty remark of a
great French statesman (M. Thiers) who said:
"Catholicism may certainly hinder thought, but it
can only hinder it in those who were not made for
accurate thinking."

S1 De Civitate Dei, XXI, 23.

[I46 ]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

Now this is a subject with which it is difficult
to deal adequately within the space of a few pages
— the only thing possible in a work of this kind.
But I happen to have given a good deal of thought
to it and to have written a book, specifically deal-
ing with the arguments commonly urged against
the truth and reasonableness of the Catholic doc-
trine of Hell. It has passed through several edi-
tions in England and a cheap American edition
has recently been published.32 I venture to com-
mend it to any reader who is seriously interested
in the subject. Many of my correspondents, and
indeed the entire non-Catholic press, have ad-
mitted that I have dealt with the subject fully and
fairly and that I have not shirked any objection
that can reasonably be urged against the doctrine.

Several of them have entirely changed their
viewpoint after perusing the book, and have re-
turned to their obedience to the Church and the
practice of their religion.

What I therefore propose to do here — and in-
deed all I can do — is to set forth, in a few brief
and concise paragraphs, what right reason has
to say about the matter, and what some really
great and accurate thinkers have said about it.
From these alone it will be seen how very far Sir

32 Hell and its Problems. Published at 682 Main St, Buffalo,
N. Y. Thirty cents, including postage.

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Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge are from the
truth when they assert that "Hell has long
dropped out of the thoughts of every reasonable
man."

Now we have first of all to fix in our minds
the wholly incontestable fact that no honest man
can, by any feat of gymnastics or any trick of
exegesis, get rid of the plain and clear teaching
of the New Testament. If that Book teaches
anything at all, in concise and emphatic terms,
explicitly and implicitly, it is the doctrine of Hell
— of an enduring penal state for the perversely
and obstinately wicked. It is, it should be borne
in mind, not a question of an isolated text here
and there which, as Doyle says, may be oriental
imagery, but of a teaching underlying the entire
thought-structure of the New Testament and
which meets us on practically every page of the
book. With its omission, without the conception
of a future and permanent state of punishment,
consequent upon a life of sin and rebellion against
God, the Christian scheme of Redemption has
neither consistency nor coherence, and its most
central doctrines become unreasonable and in-
comprehensible.

It is instructive and significant to observe that
this transparent fact has never been questioned
by the skeptic and the unbeliever, however

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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

strongly he may have opposed the doctrine itself
on moral grounds. "It has been reserved for the
accommodating shallow Christians of modern
days, who wish to reject it without abandoning
their belief in Christianity, to throw dust in other
people's eyes as well as their own, by obscuring
what is really a very simple matter with ingenious
— though it may be unconscious — sophistries."

Such words as are employed by Christ Himself
in St. Matthew, XXV, 41-46; in St. Mark III, 29
and IX, 46-47; and Apoc. XIV, 10-11 ; and XXI,
8, remain, as the late Sir James Stephen rightly
said, "The most terrific words which have ever
been spoken in the ears of man."

But "what Christ teaches is the truth. It is
unthinkable that He should have told us of hor-
rors of the future life, for our good, and the
horrors not really there. . . . We may distrust
any view of their meaning that conflicts with
the justice and mercy of God, or we may dis-
trust our judgment that the meaning does so con-
flict. But the Revelation we must not dare to
refuse or reconstruct."33

Man's moral nature can, of course, with a cer-
tain amount of manipulation be made to witness
falsely. But his unperverted instinct, his normal
natural conscience, testify in favor of some grie-

33 The New Pelagianism, by J. H. Williams.
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votis punishment consequent upon sin and final
impenitence. The doctrine of Hell, therefore,
underlies the beliefs and sacrificial practices of all
heathen races.

"Menace as well as promise," wrote Mr. W. E.
Gladstone, "menace for those whom promise
could not melt or move, formed an essential part
of the provision for working out the redemption
of the world." And he continues:

"To presume upon over-riding the express
declarations of the Lord Himself, delivered from
His own authority, is surely to break up Revealed
Religion in its very ground-work, and to sub-
stitute for it a flimsy speculation, spun, like the
spider's web, by the private spirit, and about as
little capable as that web of bearing the strain by
which the false is to be severed from the true."

We know for certain that God is good, but we
also know that God, in spite of His goodness, is
capable of hurting us very severely and even
permanently in this life, and that He rigidly and
unerringly punishes sin. Is it not conceivable,
therefore, that the severity of human suffering
here is God's method of saving us from possible
greater suffering hereafter?

It is possible that could we understand what
eternity really is the notion of the reversal of the

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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

soul's condition — the necessary and final effect of
many acts and habits — would be seen to involve
an absurdity.

Any being to whom has been given that won-
derful power of will with all the consequent re-
sponsibilities of a state of probation, must be able
to fail as well as to succeed — the very term "pro-
bation" implies a risk of failure. What are we to
deem probable as to the consequences of such
failure? Reason unaided can tell us very little
of the soul after death. Certainly we have no
evidence that it will then be able to undo what it
has done during life, but rather the contrary.
The doctrine of the persistence of force does not
favor such a view and there is nothing which con-
tradicts the Church's assertion that the state in
which the soul finds itself at the close of life's
trial cannot be reversed. If so, the man who dies
in a state of aversion from the highest light and
the supreme good must remain in such a state
with all its inevitable consequences.

Some will say those consequences need not be
eternal. But if the cause should be unchangeable,
how can the consequences change? Moreover,
we are contemplating what relates to eternity
when time shall have ceased to be.

Again, the term, Eternal Punishment, may be
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an imperfect and inadequate term; it may not
nearly contain the truth as it actually is. It may
be a term conveying the nearest possible equiva-
lent to a state or condition of which we cannot,
with our present limitations, form an accurate
idea. Language, capable only of expressing and
explaining finite things, can scarcely be expected
to adequately express the infinite. May not the
difficulty, therefore, be in the term rather than in
the idea and principle which underlie it, and
which the term is meant to convey? May it not
be due to the fact that our power of thought is
limited, and that our understandings are finite
and therefore imperfect?

"Man cannot help erring; but lack of solicitude
for his eternal welfare, and for the means of
bringing it about is moral deformity."34

"Mortal sin is an essential disorder; it is a
breaking of the universal harmony." "Nature is
terrible in its consequences. If the human spirit,
after doing evil and not repenting, or more clearly
still, after rising against God and not humbling
itself before God, were restored to perfect spirit-
integrity through the simple act of its being sepa-
rated from the body, the human spirit would be
the only exception to the law of continuity and
consequence."34

31The Human Soul, by Dom A. Vonier, O.S.B.
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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

"We all expect this law of consequences to be
operative in our soul for happiness, i.e., we ex-
pect that our present efforts at sanctity shall
make our soul holy for eternity. It is illogical not
to apply the law when it is a case of moral warp-
ing and of defilement of the will.34

"Temporal losses may not be through one's
fault, may be caused by mere incapacity; yet
nature is unsparing. Spiritual losses cannot but
be the act of deliberate free will and of clear
knowledge."34

We have a certain analogy to the divine law of
punishment in our own human and imperfect
modes of measuring out punishment. It is not,
and cannot be, a question of time. A single act,
such as a theft or a murder or a forgery, is com-
mitted in a moment of time, yet the punishment
inflicted may extend over many years. The law
does not determine the amount of punishment by
the time occupied in committing the offense, but
by the nature of the offense and the moral state
and character to which it points. Now if this be
so here, in this present life, where change is still
possible, and where a transformation can still be
effected, how is it to be there where a terminus
of life is reached, where the character, by reason

34 The Human Soul, by Dom A. Vonier, O.S.B.
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of the nature of the new life, is no longer capable
of change, and where it is a question of a perma-
nent moral state and condition? Not a single
passage can be cited, either from the Old Testa-
ment or from the New, which even hints at a con-
tinued or second probation after death.

A further test of will, moreover, can surely
only be conceived to exist where two conflicting
attractions exist. But, in the other state, the
earthly life and its fascinations will have ceased
to be ; the bodily senses will no longer be alluring
the will ; all mundane attractions will have passed
away. The spiritual end will be seen to be the
oniy rational end of life and the only end now
possible. Can a Godward choice, under such con-
ditions, even if it could be conceived, be of any
moral value? Could it be called a choice at all?
It must be clear, too, upon reflection, that if, in
accordance with a law of God, man's trial-time
were prolonged indefinitely, additional agencies
being constantly brought to bear upon him, it
would be within man's power to defy God. He
would, in a sense, be compelling God to endure
his sin and to bear with the manifestations of his
perverse and rebellious will. Such a law would
be putting God at the sinner's mercy. The very
knowledge that a return to God is possible when-

[i54]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

ever he should begin to weary of his deliberate
opposition, would tend to confirm a hardened
nature in that opposition, and would fill the spir-
itual universe with beings whose ultimate destiny
would be forever trembling in the balance.

The familiar plea that the time allotted to us as
the period of our probation is too short, in view of
the consequent eternity, is a subtle self-deception.
It is not, let it be borne in mind, a question of
certain acts and things done or left undone, but
of a character formed — finally formed perhaps
in a moment of time. This moment may come
early in life; it may come late. No mortal man
can tell when the decisive crisis in the soul's life
is reached from God's point of view. "He to
whom a thousand years are as one day can, if it
so please Him, as infallibly test the entire bent
and purpose of the will by a single trial as after
a course prolonged through countless ages."

No right-thinking man will be disposed to deny
that with the light, the opportunities and the aids
vouchsafed to him, he might at any given moment
be a much better man than he really is. Life,
broadly speaking, is long enough to enable a man
to achieve his aims in the temporal order. It is
not too short to enable him to achieve his end or
purpose in the spiritual order.

[i55]

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"The Thomistic explanation55 of reprobation is
to be found, not in the direct pronouncement and
act of God; it is to be found in the condition of
the human soul irreparably spoiled by sin."

"Eternity of pain does not correspond to the
gravity of the guilt; but it corresponds to the
irreparable nature of the guilt. ... Its endless-
ness is not so much a punishment as a condition
of the spirit."

"God has made spiritual nature so perfect, that
a wrong use of their powers will bring about re-
sults as permanent as the right use of them."

"As long as man can be saved, God will assist
him in the work of salvation. After death, his
spirit-nature does not allow of salvation, because
it does not allow of change."

"A second existence for man must, of neces-
sity, be an existence totally different from all
our human experience. A second existence could
never mean this, that we should then do the
things we have neglected to do during the first
existence. As all our sensitive life will be gone,
we cannot do or undo anything of the first, the
mortal existence."

"Man, having no other human life, through the

35 See The Human Soul.

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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

fact of death, cannot be said to have another
chance; another chance means another human
life."

"How much," wrote Mr. Gladstone, "do we
know of the lot of the perversely wicked ? They
disappear into pain and sorrow; the veil drops
upon them in that condition. Every indication of
a further change is withheld, so that if it be de-
signed it has not been made known, and is no-
where incorporated with the divine teaching.
Whatever else pertains to this sad subject is with-
held from our too curious and unprofitable gaze.
The specific and limited statements supplied to
us are, after all, only expressions, in particular
form, of immovable and universal laws — on the
one hand, of the irrevocable union between suffer-
ing and sin; on the other hand, of the perfection
of the Most High — both of them believed in full,
have only in part been disclosed, and having else-
where, it may be, their plenary manifestation in
that day of the restitution of all things for which
a groaning and travailing creation yearns."

The problem why God created beings whose
future misery we must be able to foresee, we can-
not hope to solve with our limited understanding.
We can but reason from the known to the un-
known. The mystery, most probably, has its

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explanation in the fact of our moral freedom. In
any case, physical and mental suffering, grievous
sickness and pain, declining health and the dis-
comforts of old age, are, in one form or another,
the lot of all men. And, although God foresaw
all this natural suffering, He yet created man.
His foreknowledge respecting a world of anguish
and woe did not prevent His calling that world
into being. But if God's manifest action, in the
matter of our present state, is in the end recon-
cilable with our intuitive belief in His goodness
and love, why should it not be equally so in mat-
ters pertaining to the future life? If, in passing
into conscious existence, terrible risks respecting
the present life are incurred by the creature, why
not equal or conceivably greater risks respecting
the future life? Bearing in mind the unity of
nature and of nature's laws, is it not more than
probable that the law pertains to both states?
The risks incurred may, for all we know, be the
necessary adjuncts to the gift of conscious life
and of free-will. In any case, "If there is one
thing that is certain it is this: that no one will
ever be punished with the positive punishment of
the life to come who has not, with full knowl-
edge, and complete consciousness, and full con-
sent, turned his back upon Almighty God."

It must finally be evident that if everyone is
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Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

to go to Heaven finally, whether they choose it or
not, then life is only a kind of game and men
mere pawns that are all put into the box at the
end.

And is it credible, we may ask, that the Son of
God should have become man and have died on
the Cross, merely to save men from the short
and temporal consequences of sin ? Does not the
infinity of the Sacrifice imply an infinity of misery
as that from which the Sacrifice was intended to
deliver those who would accept it?

It is a curious thing that a denial of the doc-
trine of Hell, as a necessary element in the
scheme of Redemption, is almost always followed
by a denial of some other important doctrine con-
nected with the incarnation and redemption of
Christ. It inevitably leads to what is termed
"advanced" or "liberal" views, and what is this
but another name for disbelief or rejection of
truths, which the natural and limited human rea-
son cannot square with its dictates and surmises,
and against which the unaided intellect rebels.

It is also a significant thing and worthy of note
that to the Martyrs and the Saints, who lived
very close to God, Christ's teaching respecting
Hell and the punishmnet of sin has never pre-
sented any moral or intellectual difficulty. It has

[i59]

The New Black Magic

never caused them to love God less, to be less
willing to die for Him, or to entertain less noble
or elevating ideas of His character. It is chiefly
to the easy-going man of the world, to the child
of the modern age, who often does not himself
know what he really believes, that these difficul-
ties occur. It is he who waxes eloquent as to the
unreasonableness of the doctrine of Hell.

When the aged Polycarp, the disciple of St.
John, was put to the torture he said to his tor-
turers: "You threaten me with the fire which
only burns for an hour and is then extinguished.
You do not know the fire of the judgment to come
and of the eternal punishment reserved for the
wicked."

One thing we may surely regard as certain : A
correct estimate of the truths of the supernatural
order cannot be formed by the natural human
reason, least of all by the reason which is not in
some degree in "rapport" with God and with that
other-world-order. "The natural (or sensual)
man receiveth (or perceiveth) not the things of
the Spirit of God.36 They are foolishness to him.
A higher light is needed to perceive them; that
light is the gift of God, and it is by that light
alone, responded to by a certain soul-culture and

3SI Corinth. : 11, 14.

[i6o]

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience

soul-development, that he can see rightly and
judge justly. "Everything grows clear," said
Pasteur, "in the reflections from the Infinite.
"The more I know, the more nearly is my faith
that of the Breton peasant. Could I but know
all, I would have the faith of the Breton peasant
woman."

But I cannot here pursue this subject any
further. Sufficient has been said to show that it
would be wholly inconsistent with our ideas of
the dignity and holiness of God and repugnant to
human reason to assume that Christ, whom even
Lodge and Doyle regard as a teacher come from
God, should have misled mankind on so great and
momentous a matter — "should have told us of
horrors of the future life, for our good, and the
horrors not really there."

[161]

VII

THE EVIDENCE OF REASON AND
COMMON SENSE

THE EVIDENCE OF REASON AND
COMMON SENSE

It is scarcely necessary to state at length what
true and Historical Christianity has done for the
world in the past — what the Church and her
Sacraments mean for millions of intelligent and
serious-minded men and women today.

The evidence lies all around us — in an endless
variety of forms. The daily increasing stream
of converts into the Catholic Church in all coun-
tries— in many instances highly intellectual men
and women who have passed through various
phases of religious thought and found them want-
ing— her admitted triumphs and victories during
the war; the admission of failure of their own
communions on the part of Anglican Bishops and
of Heads of other non-Catholic organizations —
all these constitute a mass of such significant and
incontrovertible testimony that none can afford
to disregard it. A feeling is perceptibly gaining
ground everywhere that the Historic Church, and
the Historic Faith, can alone face and deal with
the grave problems which are perplexing us to-
day, and that upon them alone the reconstruction
of our shattered and shipwrecked civilization can
be attempted.

[165]

The New Black Magic

We have heard much in these days of the sup-
posed failures of Christianity; but it would be
more in accordance with the facts, as I have
shown, if those who use such expressions spoke
of the failures of a certain kind of Christianity.
Catholicism manifestly is far from being a fail-
ure. And, indeed, if we would form a true and
just estimate of matters it is but necessary to
endeavor to realize what the world would be
without it today.

The true Catholic Faith has brought us the
only rational solution of the mystery and mean-
ing of life; it has placed us in a right and true
relation to God; it has solved for us the riddle
of suffering and endowed it with a noble and ex-
alted significance; it has brought us the forgive-
ness of sin and the means of union with God; it
provides us, in its sacramental institutions, with
treasures of grace by means of which we are able
to bear life's burdens and to fight its battles. It
is a source of never-failing consolation to us in
sorrow and sickness and in the hour of death.
Millions of men and women, of all nations, are
ready to bear testimony to the reality of these
facts and experiences.

But it must be evident that if the "New Revela-
tion" be true, if Christ is not what we have be-
lieved Him to be, if there never was an Atone-

[ 166]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

ment for Sin and a consequent means of recon-
cilation and union with God, our whole outlook
on life will have to be changed, and the testimony
of the best and noblest of men will have to be re-
garded as untrustworthy and worthless. We
shall have to reconstruct our entire moral and
spiritu. 1 life.

God, we are told by Sir Conan Doyle and his
spirit-instructors, is so infinite that He is not even
within the ken of the "higher" Spirits; as to
Christ, the ideas respecting Him are so vague
that it would be difficult to say who and what He
really is. He cannot, in any case, be said to
possess that divine authority which we attribute
to Him. We cannot, therefore, be sure that He
hears our prayers and is able to answer them.
The good angels do not give any perceptible
signs of their presence in connection with these
manifestations and cannot, therefore, be sup-
posed to be aiding us. We must, therefore, here-
after "seek the truth from the dead" — the very
thing so strictly forbidden us in both the Old and
New Testaments — we must resort, for light and
guidance, in earthly as well as in spiritual matters,
to tipping tables and the automatic pencil, to the
spirits of the ouija-board and the seance-room.
This, it will and must be admitted, is the neces-
sary and inevitable inference, for any logical

[167]

The New Black Magic

mind that accepts the terms of the "New Revela-
tion," and that thinks the matter out to its last
and fullest conclusion.

But can a greater piece of folly and of hopeless
and utter absurdity be conceived? Are there
really intelligent men and women so utterly de-
void of common sense that they can face such an
inference with equanimity ? Has the world gone
so hopelessly mad that it has lost all sense of the
true meaning and proportion of things? Let us
try and picture to ourselves a world hereafter in
which the seance, with the entranced medium,
and the tipping table, is the ordinary and serious
mode of seeking after truth and of obtaining
guidance and direction in the affairs and com-
plexities of life — where we are to learn what the
aim and purpose of life really is, and how it is to
be achieved. To those of us who are familiar
with what goes on in the seance-room ; the phys-
ical and moral effects on the medium and the sit-
ters, the wearisome process of establishing "con-
ditions," the lies and contradictions of the spirits,
the frivolous waste of precious hours, the insati-
able craving for further evidence and more
seances, the neglect of all true and wholesome
spiritual exercises — the picture is one to literally
appall the imagination.

One cannot find words strong enough to warn
[i68]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

the unwary and to put them on their guard
against the perils of such a cultivation of "the
lure of the unseen." The path along which this
"New Revelation" has so far travelled is strewn
with the wrecks of happy homes, of ruined con-
stitutions, of miserable and blighted lives. But,
lest any one should imagine that I am overstating
the seriousness of the situation, I will quote what
an eminent English writer37 has quite recently
said on the subject in his comments on Doyle's
and Lodge's books :

"Let them (the public) beware; for three of
my friends, men of eminence who really believe
in Spiritualism, have told me that they have for-
bidden the very name of it, or any allusion to it,
to be mentioned in their homes, have forbidden
their wives and children to touch it, as if it were
a thing accursed. And why ? Because not being
really known and explainable, it puts their minds
on a rack; and by the 'Black Magic' which is
always part of it, so often leads to insanity and
death."

In the preface of his book, Dr. Crozier writes :

"Another revolution which the war has effected

is that the Religion of Christ and the doctrines of

the Church which were still sufficient to meet the

37 Dr. John Beattie Crozier, LL.D., in "Last Words on Great
Issues."

[I69]

The New Black Magic

needs of sorrow-laden souls, are now giving
place to a spiritualism of 'spooks' and 'mediums,'
on whose scraggy and beggarly shake-down, not
merely the bewildered, the stricken, the bereaved,
are content to lie down in peace, calmly awaiting
their death — but even the intellectuals as well. Is
this not a strange topsy-turvydom ? And would
it not indeed be a theme for comedy, were it not
so pathetic a tragedy? For consider — that the
very Christianity which when it came into the
world, occupied itself largely in casting out these
'spooks' and 'mediums,' these sorcerers and
necromancers — that this Christianity, I say,
should, in its decadence, have so lost itself and
its hold on the minds of men, that these mediums
from their superior pose and elevation, can now
actually condescend to patronize it — going even
so far as to suggest that if its old moribund leaves
and branches could only be sprinkled by their
healing waters, it would revive in all its pristine
vigor; and, like the old and 'wappened widow' in
Shakespeare's Tirnon' be spiced to the April day
again! Is this not monstrous in this 'so-called'
twentieth century? No wonder that Father
Vaughan, representing the Roman Catholic
Church, should in his disgust on seeing Prot-
estants lying low under this degradation, feel in
his cheek a blush of shame! To me, as an out-

[170]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

sider, there seems, I confess, something in the
continuous tradition of the old original Church
after all!"

Other leading and sensible men of our time,
who may be credited with knowing something
about the matter, have expressed themselves in a
similar manner. Professor H. E. Armstrong,
F.R.S., is emphatic in his condemnation. In a
postscript to Mr. Edward Clodd's work, "If a
man die shall he live again ?" written in refutation
of "Raymond," the work by Sir Oliver Lodge,
which is largely responsible for the present re-
crudescence of necromancy, Prof. Armstrong
says :

"It appears to me to be a cumulative and force-
ful gravamen against a movement every aspect
of which is pernicious — pernicious alike to the
prime movers and to the public ; one which, at all
costs, in support of sanity of human outlook, we
should seek to stamp out with every weapon at
our command. . . . That neither the Church nor
educated opinion should have had the courage,
the sense of duty, to take real exception to its
promulgation, cannot well be regarded otherwise
than as a proof that we are living in a period of
intellectual decadence."

By "The Church," says Fr. Hudson, "Prof.
Armstrong understands, of course, the Church of

[171 3

The New Black Magic

England. If he were better informed he would
be aware that almost simultaneously with the
appearance of "Raymond" the Church renewed
its condemnation of the movement which he
rightly considers pernicious and so vehemently
condemns."38

Professor Percy Gardner of Oxford, a non-
Catholic like the two authors quoted, writes:

"The necromancy of today depicts a future
state of things as colorless and meaningless as
are the lives of many comfortable Christians,
without spiritual passion or ambition."

But, looking away for the moment from the
definitely religious and moral aspect of the mat-
ter, while bearing in mind certain facts connected
with spirit-intercourse which cannot very well be
ignored, is there anything of solid value which
the disciple of the new cult is likely to derive
from the practice of his new religion ?

1. If the practice be indulged in with a view to
securing scientific certainty respecting the im-
mortality of the human soul, the seeker will most
certainly be disappointed. Such certainty cannot,
logically, be deduced from the evidence furnished
by spiritistic phenomena. In the first place, we
can never be absolutely sure, from the very

38 The text of the decree referred to will be found on page 203.
[172]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

nature of the case, that the communicators are
really the spirits of the dead. I have shown on
what grounds grave doubt must be, and is, enter-
tained by the most experienced experimenters
on this point. The best evidence conceivable
could never yield more than a mere probability,
and such probability is attainable on other and
far better grounds.

But even if this were not the case, if it could
be proved that the spirits of a certain low order
of deceased human beings are, in some instances,
the communicators, their manifestations could
not prove more than survival of death. It could
then still be urged that such survival might termi-
nate after a time, when the vitality of the life-
principle which has managed to escape the
destruction of the body has spent itself and is
exhausted. I had this forcibly brought home to
me, some years ago, when a materialistic scientist,
who had heard of my researches, called upon me
in London and asked me to make him acquainted
with my evidence. He maintained, after consid-
ering this evidence, that even if all the facts pre-
sented had to be accepted, they would not affect
his scientific position. "It is not inconceivable,"
he said, "that the life-principle in man, carrying
with it certain mental impressions and even a kind
of individuality, survives the body for a time and

[ 173]

The New Black Magic

is then reabsorbed in the universal or cosmic
life." And I did not see, and have never seen
since, how this contention can be satisfactorily
controverted.

It is to be admitted, moreover, that certain
facts which psychical research has brought to
light, could be made to support this theory. The
spiritists admit that it is difficult for them to get
in touch with spirits who have been many years
on the other side. Sir Conan Doyle himself
says:39 "Communications usually come from
those who have not long passed over and tend to
grow fainter, as one would expect." This, of
course, is interpreted by him as implying that the
spirits, in the course of time, reach higher stages
of development and proportionately lose touch
with the earth-life ; but it will be seen that it also
admits of the other interpretation. For a skep-
tically inclined and cautious mind, therefore,
even an established communication from the
spirit-world is not likely to bring the certainty
and consolation so eagerly desired.

Immortality — an endless conscious existence
of the individual soul — is the inevitable postulate
of reason and reflection, when put to a right and
proper use. With few exceptions it is the uni-
versal and instinctive belief of mankind-— a be-

39 The New Revelation. P. 72.

[174]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

lief all the more remarkable since it persists in
spite of its being opposed to all sensible appear-
ances. The simplicity and immateriality of the
human soul which leave it unaffected by the
process of corruption, the preservation of per-
sonal identity in spite of incessant bodily change,
the craving for knowledge and happiness never
fully attained in the present life, the circumstance
that the universe is rational and that there must
be underlying it a purpose and an aim which
would not be obtained if the soul were annihilated
and if the wrongs of life were not righted — virtue
not rewarded and vice and sin not punished — all
these are far more solid and substantial grounds
for believing in the immorality of the soul than
those which could possibly be furnished by the
fugitive and deceptive phenomena of Spiritism.
All true and accurate thinkers, in all times, have
acknowledged this, and it is for this reason that
the spiritistic phenomena, observed in the past,
have never been given any prominence in the
various scholastic arguments in defense of the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul. It is evi-
dent, therefore, that, in this respect, the "New
Revelation" does not provide the reflecting mind
with any really additional or superior evidence.
It can only satisfy those who do not think very
deeply about the matter and who are easily im-

[175]

The, New Black Magic

pressed by the appearance of things. "It may
well be asked," writes Dr. John D. Quackenbos,40
"if communications with the dead be lawful and
fraught with satisfaction, would God have con-
cealed from men so innocent a means of gratify-
ing the most intense longing of human nature?
The answer is — No! . . . The proof of immor-
tality is not to be sought for in the vaporings of
spiritism."

2. If spiritistic practices be resorted to in
order to ascertain the conditions and character
of the other life, the inquirer will find himself
equally disappointed. I have shown from actual
experiences and from the statements of the spirits
themselves that nothing certain and reliable can
be ascertained in this respect. We look in vain
for any kind of agreement or oneness of idea, on
any single point of teaching, emanating from the
spirit-spheres. All is confusion, and the incon-
sistencies and contradictions with which we meet
are sometimes altogether ridiculous in their char-
acter. The communications conveyed through
the respective mediums would seem to reflect and
to express some latent belief or subjective impres-
sion of the sensitive himself, rather than any
objective truth, universally known and under-
stood in the world of spirit and disclosed for the

40 Body and Spirit.

[I76]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

enlightenment and moral advancement of man-
kind.

Sometimes these messages are nothing but the
familiar jargon of the seance-room, delivered
with a certain air of superior knowledge and in-
sight, but wholly inconsistent in character and
devoid of all credibility. Sir Oliver Lodge sug-
gests that some of the lengthy communications
of "Feda" (his medium's spirit-control) may have
their origin in the medium's dream-conscious-
ness; but he overlooks the fact that they come
with the same credentials as any other message
from Raymond or other discarnate spirits, and
that if they are unreliable and imaginary, we have
no reason for placing confidence in any spirit's
description of the other life.

"These wild utterances," wrote the critic of a
similar work in the London Times,41 "do not seem,
as a rule, like revelations of the secrets of the
prison-house, but rather like gibberings from a
lunatic-asylum, peopled by inmates of vulgar be-
haviour and of the lowest morals ; creatures that
lie and cheat, give false names and unverifiable
addresses." And even the spirits, communicating
with each other in the spirit-spheres, do not seem
to be of the same mind. A truly comical illus-
tration of this fact is given us in an incident re-

uJuly 9, 1908.

[177 3

The New Black Magic

corded in a recent work by Dr. Carrington. It
is the case of a soldier who had been killed by a
German shell and who is taken by his spirit-
brother to one of the "rest-halls," specially pre-
pared for newly arrived pilgrims. He had been
somewhat of a recluse in his earth-life and now
reflects upon the mistakes made in that life. He
describes the conditions and environments of his
new life by means of automatic writing. But
on returning to the rest-hall "a very decided cold
douche" is awaiting him. He meets a messenger
from a higher sphere who says to him : "Do you
know that most of what you have conveyed to
your friends at the matter-end of the line is quite
illusory"? And he then suggests that the spirit-
soldier had better live a little of the new life first
before he talks about it to his friends on this side
of the barrier. Can anything more grotesque
and absurd, I would ask, be conceived?

Commenting upon these spirit-messages and
upon the utter impossibility of picking even the
smallest grains of gold out of such a mass of
worthless rubbish, Mr. Maeterlinck writes:42

"Beyond our last hour is it all bare and shape-
less and dim? If it be so, let them (the spirits)
tell us ; and the evidence of darkness will at least
possess a grandeur that is all too absent from

12 Life after Death. Fortnightly Review, Sept.-Oct, 1913.

[178]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

these cross-examining methods. Of what use is
it to die if all life's trivialities continue? Is it
really worth while to have passed through the ter-
rifying gorges which open on the eternal fields
in order to remember that we had a great-uncle
called Peter, or that our cousin Paul was afflicted
with varicose veins and gastric complaint? . . .
Without demanding a great miracle one would
nevertheless think that we had a right to expect
from a mind which nothing now enthralls some
other discourse than that which it avoided when
it was still subject to matter. . . . Why do they
(the spirits) speak to us so seldom of the future?
And for what reason, when they do venture upon
it, are they mistaken with such disheartening
regularity?"

And in his work, 'The Unknown Guest," Mr.
Maeterlinck writes : "They (the exponents of the
spiritistic theory) see the dead crowding around
us like wretched puppets, indissolubly attached
to the insignificant scene of their death by the
thousand little threads of insipid memories and
infantile hobbies. They are supposed to be here,
blocking up our homes, more abjectly human
than if they were still alive, vague, inconsistent,
garrulous, derelict, futile and idle, tossing hither
and thither their desolate shadows which are be-
ing slowly swallowed up by silence and oblivion,

[179]

The New Black Magic

busying themselves incessantly with what no
longer concerns them, but almost incapable of
doing us a real service, so much so that, in short,
they would end by persuading us that death
serves no purpose, that it neither purifies nor ex-
alts, that it brings no deliverance and that it is
indeed a thing of terror and despair."

3. Again if these occult practices be indulged
in in order to obtain counsel and guidance in the
ordinary affairs of human life, the inquirer will
here, too, meet with disappointment, and indeed
with worse than disappointment. I happen to
have an exceptionally wide experience in this re-
spect, by reason of the many communications
from disillusioned spiritists which have been
made to me in the course of the years, and from
cases with which I have come in personal con-
tact. Not the slightest reliance can be placed on
any advice coming from this quarter. I have
seen the most disastrous consequences resulting
from following such advice. I know of two fami-
lies in London, lifelong and ardent spiritualists,
who were practically ruined by instructions re-
specting money investments which were given
them by their spirit-friends — these friends being
in daily communication with them, and claiming
to have made every possible inquiry before ten-
dering the advice.

[180]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

It is true I also know of one case in which the
advice given resulted in the gaining of a very
large sum of money; but it ended in the person,
thus enriched, ruining his constitution soon after
by the excessive use of alcohol and luxurious
living.

I also know of instances in which the advice
given to young and inexperienced girls would
have ended in moral disaster, had it been fol-
lowed. It was their womanly instinct, happily
remaining intact, which saved them from that
disaster. But those of us who are acquainted
with these occurrences have no difficulty in find-
ing the true explanation of many a mysterious
and inexplicable happening" in our day. Most
confessors in the larger cities know what an
amount of mischief is caused in the family life
by obedience to directions received from these
spirit-guides and by visits to the clairvoyants and
writing-mediums. But a book would have to be
written were one to collect and present the num-
berless cases with which current literature and
the records of the law-courts furnish us. A sin-
gle application of common-sense should be more
than sufficient to destroy the very foundation of
the entire edifice of theories and illogical deduc-
tions which has been erected upon these phenom-
ena, were it not, as Mr. G. Chesterton says, "that

[1S1]

The New Black Magic

there is nothing so uncommon, nowadays, as
common-sense."

It must be evident that if it were really within
the power of these spirits to communicate to us
information of real help and value in our social
and family life, the spiritists and their mediums
would be the first to benefit by it. We would ex-
pect to find their family life to be the best regu-
lated in the world, their daughters happily mar-
ried and their sons well placed ; we would expect
to find the mediums prosperous or at least in com-
fortable circumstances. But, as a matter of fact,
the very opposite is the case. I will quote what a
disillusioned spiritist,43 whose own life was a
noted American trance medium for many years,
has to say on the subject. In his work, Spiritual-
ism Unveiled, he writes :

"The extensive opportunity which I have had,
and that, too, amongst the first-class of spiritual-
ists, of learning its nature and results, I think will
enable me to lay just claims to being a competent
witness in the matter. I am afraid that what
I have to say will offend many who are less ac-
quainted with the phenomena than myself . . .
but I write that the experienced may more fully
comprehend the dangers attending it. I am fre-
quently asked if I still believe in the phenomena

43 Dr. B. F. Hatch.

[182]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

of spiritualism. I answer Yes. I should deem
it more than a waste of time to write about what
does not exist. ... I have heard much of the
improvement in individuals from a belief in spir-
itualism. With such I have had no acquaint-
ance. But I have known many whose integrity
of character and uprightness of purpose rendered
them worthy examples to all around, but who,
on becoming mediums and giving up their indi-
viduality, also gave up every sense of honor and
decency. A less degree of severity in this re-
mark will apply to a large class of mediums and
believers. There are thousands of high-minded
and intelligent spiritualists who will agree with
me that it is no slander in saying that the incul-
cation of no doctrine in this country (America)
has ever shown such disastrous moral and social
results as the spiritual theories. . . . With but
little inquiry I have been able to count up over
seventy mediums, most of whom have wholly
abandoned their conjugal relations, others living
with their paramours called 'affinities/ others in
promiscuous adultery, and still others exchanged
partners. Old men and women, who have passed
the meridian of life, are not unfrequently the vic-
tims of this hallucination."

"The subject," says another writer,44 "strange

"Hubbel: Facts and Fancies in Spiritualism.

[183]

The New Black Magic

to say, seemed to have the power of introducing
discord in every family into which it entered, of
arraying husband against wife in the divorce-
court, and of producing all manner of domestic
infelicity and sexual irregularities. This is a
rather strange result of the belief that we are
surrounded by the spirits of our beloved dead
who see all we do."

Those of my readers who are familiar with my
earlier works will be acquainted with the abun-
dant mass of evidence on this subject which is
available, and a great deal of which is the result
of personal experience and of a study of the
published writings of spiritists and of scientific
men of the saner sort. In its collective character
it is overwhelming and should be sufficient to de-
ter the most stable and well-balanced of minds
from touching the unclean thing.

Again it is known to all the world that all pub-
lic mediums (except perhaps the few who have
independent sources of income) are poor. They
compete with one another, in their advertise-
ments, in commending their gifts at the most
moderate charges, business mediums claiming to
have been the means of providing their clients
with great wealth, while they themselves remain
poor and are compelled to eke out a miserable ex-
istence by these precarious means. They claim

[184]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

to foretell the future and to guard their devotees
against clearly-discerned bodily perils and sick-
ness, but they cannot prevent so noted a defender
of their cause as the late Mr. Stead from losing
his life in a shipwreck, or to save numbers of
their followers and consulters from unhappy al-
liances, from suicide, and the asylum. Must we
not conclude that those who, in spite of these ob-
vious inconsistencies, believe in these spirits, and
look to them for true guidance and enlighten-
ment, have parted with every fragment of right
judgment and common-sense?

If it be asserted that the arguments which I
have adduced tend to deprive sorrowing hearts
of that consolation and assurance which spirit-
istic phenomena are affording them at this time
of anguish and pain, I reply that they are, on the
contrary, calculated to save them from a disillu-
sionment which is infallibly awaiting them. All
my experiences go to prove that this disillusion-
ment is bound to come sooner or later, and that
then "their last state will be worse than their
first." I have seen too many instances of this
kind to entertain any doubt about the matter. I
have the records of a case before me, in which the
deception was successfully maintained for a pe-
riod of five years, but in which the masquerading
spirit finally himself confessed that he was not

[185]

The New Black Magic

the person he had claimed to be. Such instances,
in any case, are ample proof that certainty in this
matter is never possible for the sorrowing heart.
But these very contradictions, so characteristic
of all spirit-messages, constitute one of the great-
est perils for the infatuated spiritist and one of
the greatest triumphs for the intelligences at the
back of them. They result in a ceaseless consul-
tation of all kinds of mediums, and in a running
from one seance to another, in an incessant ques-
tioning of the oracles, in the vain hope that better
"conditions" will be secured, and that the fla-
grant inconsistency will be explained. This ac-
counts for the fact that the number of public
mediums is increasing and flourishing to such an
alarming extent that, in some of the big cities
like London the police have been compelled to
interfere. But, by this means, an increasing
number of minds are rendered passive, the door
of communication is being more widely opened,
and these spirits are afforded facilities of
more effectually invading and dominating the
life of the world and of mankind. Never
probably in all the history of the world has a
greater danger threatened our moral and social
life!

The habitual consultation of the spirits on
questions of life and death, finally, is a source of

[186]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

endless mental unrest and disquietude. The very
circumstance that the "higher" spirits give con-
flicting accounts of the conditions of the other
life and of man's present duties and obligations
in this respect, prevent the mind from arriving
at any settled religious conviction. And, as all
men know, a true spiritual life cannot be built up
on permanent doubt and uncertainty. We must
have some fixed idea as to our true relation to
God, and as to the duties which we owe to Him
if we are to construct our life aright and if our
prayers are to have any value and meaning for
us. It is surely utterly absurd to maintain, in the
words of Doyle,45 that so far as Religion is con-
cerned "the southern races will always demand
what is less austere than the North, the West will
always be more critical than the East," and that,
on this principle of adaptation, a great stride can
be made "toward religious peace and unity."
Truth surely is truth, and if it has been given at
all, it is authoritative and must be truth for one
race as well as for another. Its acceptance or
rejection, or its modification, cannot be made de-
pendent upon peculiar national characteristics
and mental requirements and tendencies. It can-
not be true in the West, and untrue, or only par-
tially true, in the East. It must be true always
45 "The New Revelation." P. 52.

The New Black Magic

and everywhere and, indeed, it exists in order
that the nations may conform themselves to it,
not that they may make it conformable to their
particular whims and fancies and their likes and
dislikes.

But have we not, in this lack of finality and
certainty in the matter of all these new religions,
in this "ever-learning yet never coming to a
knowledge of the truth," the explanation of all
the mental and religious unrest, and all the moral
disorders which are so characteristic of our age
and of which the disastrous consequences con-
front us on every side? The "higher" men and
women of our day are like ships without rudder
and compass, tossed hither and thither by the
turbulent waters of the ocean of life, lacking all
character and stability, and utterly devoid of any
clearly recognized aim and purpose in life. Man,
clearly, was made for God and for a supernatural
end, and the present life has no meaning at all
unless it be the training ground on which he is
to qualify for the attainment and enjoyment of
that end. But this is utterly impossible, as all
experience proves, if he has no fixed and perma-
nent truth on which he can construct his life, and
no settled principles by which his actions are to
be guided and directed. "A holy man continueth
in wisdom as the sun; but the fool is changed as

[ 188]

The Evidence of Reason and Common Sense

the moon.46 He that wavereth is like a wave of
the sea which is moved and carried about by the
wind ... a double-minded man is inconsistent
in all his ways."47

Now let the reader compare all this mental
tight-rope dancing, all this chasing after new and
higher truths, all this vain seeking after light in
quarters where it can never be found, with the
clear and concise teachings of Christ Our Lord
which admit of no compromise and toning down,
which the best of men, in all ages and nations,
have instinctively recognized to be the truth, and
which, unless purposely distorted and perverted,
infallibly introduce order and harmony, and
peace and restfulness, into every human soul.
Let him compare these mutually contradictory
and conflicting systems of religion with the un-
changing and unchangeable doctrines of the His-
toric Church, which are daily bringing unspeak-
able peace and consolation to millions of souls in
every part of this wide earth, which sustain and
stay the soul in life and solace it in death, and on
which alone a true and enduring spiritual life can
be built up. Can an intelligent man, who has
weighed the matter fully and carefully, in all its
bearings — can he hesitate in his choice? Must

*6Eccles.: XXVII, 12.
*; St. James I, 6-8.

[I89]

The New Black Magic

not common-sense and reason unite in declaring
that these new revelations so-called are wholly
inconsistent with our instinctive ideas of the dig-
nity, justice and holiness of God, and offensive
to our religious feelings and our common-sense?

[ 190]

VIII
THE INEVITABLE INFERENCE

THE INEVITABLE INFERENCE

If we now sum up the evidence which has been
gathered together from many sources and from
various points of view and consider it fully and
fairly, as a whole, and in all its bearings, we are
literally driven to the conclusion that the "New
Revelation," ushered in by spirit-messages, by
the entranced medium, the tipping-table, and the
automatic pencil, is a gigantic delusion imposed
upon a world which has become estranged from
Christ and lapsed into paganism. It is a rever-
sion to practices and beliefs which are as old as
the world, and which inquiry has shown to be a
characteristic of the pagan civilizations. The
highest probability is that these spirits, who come
to us in the forms and with the voices of our dead,
are not really spirits of the dead at all, but are
some of those fallen angels48 of which the true
Revelation speaks and which are known to have
come with similar pretences and under identical
disguises in pre-Christian times. They are repre-
sentatives of that hostile spirit-world which has,
from the beginning of time, opposed itself to

48 See the interesting work on this subject, by Rev. A. M.
Lepicier, O.S.M. "The Unseen World."

[193]

The New Black Magic

man's highest interests and to the true moral
and spiritual progress of the human race. Their
activities were checked and paralyzed when
Christ appeared in the world, and wherever His
Divine authority was acknowledged and obeyed
— where men continued to live under the protect-
ing power of His true Church and her Sacra-
ments.

The phenomena, attending the ushering in of
this "New Revelation" and, in some respects re-
sembling those recorded in the New Testament,
are not identical with them in their origin and
character, but are really travesties or caricatures
of them — bad imitations, staged, beyond doubt,
with the intent of deceiving and misleading the
unwary. The circumstance that these phenom-
ena and teachings meet with such ready accept-
ance and belief is due to a variety of very ob-
vious causes, the chief of which is the state of
disorder and anarchy which reigns in almost
every sphere of our modern life, and which is
causing the distressed mind of man to be thrown
hither and thither in its search after truth, and
in its effort to find some sort of convenient resting
place for the soul. Man, somehow, cannot get
on very long without some kind of religion, and
when he rebels against and ultimately rejects the
one authoritatively revealed to him, he goes on a

[ 194 ]

The Inevitable Inference

search for some attractive-looking substitute and
fashions a religion for himself and after his own
heart.

In the non-Catholic religious sphere, therefore,
the outlook is a peculiarly distressful and dis-
heartening one. The conflict of creeds, the in-
cessant wrangling over disputed points of doc-
trine, the bold negative assertions of rationalistic
Bible critics have undermined belief in the truth
and authority of the Sacred Scriptures and have
estranged thousands from the religion of Jesus
Christ — driven them into the arms of one or
other of those many man-made religions which
have sprung up like mushrooms all around us.
With numerous others the effect has been to cre-
ate that state of crass indifference to all matters
of Religion which is destructive to any kind of
exalted moral or spiritual life.

In the scientific and intellectual sphere, similar
disintegrating influences, as we have seen, have
been and are at work. On the materialistic side,
the speculative theories of individual minds,
boldly put forth as the sure findings of science,
have shaken the very foundations of revealed,
and indeed, of natural Religion, and have under-
mined any lingering belief in the supremacy of
the human conscience and in the responsibility
of the soul before God. On the spiritistic side

[195]

The New Black Magic

there is, as we have likewise seen, a reversion to
pagan practices and a substitution of the teaching
of spirits for the teachings of the Spirit of God.

In the social and material sphere, forces are in
operation which are fatal to all religious belief
and practice, and to the cultivation of any kind
of soul-life. The interests and energies of the
mind are solely and exclusively directed to the
achievement of material or social success, to vic-
tory in that struggle of life which is daily be-
coming fiercer and more absorbing, and to the
securing of a mode of life which tends to crowd
out all higher considerations and all nobler in-
terests.

And even though it be abundantly manifest
from the existing state of the world that the
civilization which has been built up upon these
material forces has broken down utterly and is
in a state of decadence, there is as yet no very
perceptible indication that the fact is fully recog-
nized and that the true causes are discerned.

It is in this world of conflicting beliefs, of an-
tagonistic forces, of ceaseless material effort,
that the doctrines of spiritism meet, as we might
have expected, with ready acceptance. They
adapt themselves, in a marvelous manner, to the
prevailing tendencies of thought — to the Zeit-
geist, and, while retaining some semblance of the

[ 196 ]

The Inevitable Inference

Christian Religion, they make it possible for a
man to gratify all his desires and ambitions, and
to eliminate from his life the inconvenient and
hindering claims of God and of the soul.

They enable him to make that judicious com-
promise between the world and God which is so
dear to the human heart, and to rest content in
the assurance that, however perverse and unsat-
isfactory his life may have been, there is nothing
much that can happen to him in the after-life,
since there all wrongs can be righted and all the
crooked things be made straight.

Now when we realize the fact that the true His-
toric Christ and the true Historic Church con-
stitute today the one loud and living protest
against this anarchical state of things and against
these perverse views of life, we come to under-
stand why it is that the doctrine of the divinity
of Christ is so strenuously and universally denied
by the spirits of the seance-room and of the "New
Revelation." With the rejection of this truth the
world, strictly speaking, ceases to be Christian,
separates itself from the supernatural order, and
reverts to a state of pure nature. And, in this
state of pure nature, there is provided for these
spirits a wide and fruitful field of operation.

When the ancient Roman world was in a state
of decadence, it was the divine impulse, emanat-

[i97]

The New Black Magic

ing from the Divine Christ, which infused new
life into that world and transformed and regen-
erated it. It was the Divine Christ Who laid the
foundations of a new order, deep and strong,
in the awakened souls and consciences of men.
It was from Him — from God Incarnate — that the
new life- forces flowed into that corrupt and de-
caying world. It was for this truth, clearly dis-
cerned by illumined souls, that the best of men
suffered, and bled, and died. It was by means
of His Church and her valid Sacraments that
Christ continued to act upon the world through-
out the long succeeding ages of struggle and of
conflict. These are facts of history which no
right-minded man and no rightly instructed stu-
dent of history can deny. But if this be true, it
must also be true that the forces which would re-
move this truth from the life of man must be
forces antagonistic to God, and inimical to the
highest interests of mankind.

Some may comfort themselves with the reflec-
tion that they mean to honor and obey the Christ
which the "New Revelation" is substituting for
the Christ of History — that they will not cease to
be Christians. But they fail to take account of
what this historic doctrine really means and what
human nature has been, and will most assuredly
become again, without it. Man can never be

[198]

The Inevitable Inference

made permanently obedient to a teacher who, in
spite of his admitted perfections, is purely hu-
man— a created being of some kind like ourselves.
He will, sooner or later, throw off his allegiance
to him and assign him a place such as he assigns
to all other great world teachers. He will find
his laws inconvenient, and will ask himself:
What, if he is a created being like myself, does
he after all know more than I know — why should
I conform nryself to his law ? He will cease to be
a disciple and become a critic. A.11 experience
amply demonstrates this.

The Historic Christ comes with divine and
therefore binding authority. His laws are the
laws of God. They cannot, without imperiling
the soul, be disobeyed. He comes as the Source
and Author of a new and supernatural order, in
which divine and supernatural forces are in op-
eration, by means of which the soul is regener-
ated and elevated and spiritualized and made fit
for a life above nature and union with God. It
will be seen that these respective views lead to
mutually conflicting conceptions of the world-
order and of Christianity, and that they cannot
by any chance be reconciled.

To some people the contention that these mys-
terious spirits are not the spirits of the dead but
fallen angels may at first sight seem bizarre and

[199]

The New Black Magic

far-fetched; but I would draw their attention to
the fact that even thoughtful spiritists, regard-
ing the matter from a purely experimental point
of view, have come to this conclusion and have
uttered words of warning to the public.

"For my own part," writes Sir Wm. Barrett, a
former President of the Society for Psychical
Research, in a work already mentioned, "it seems
not improbable that the bulk if not the whole of
the physical manifestations witnessed in a spirit-
istic seance are the product of human-like but not
really human intelligences. ... It seems to me
that the Apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Ephe-
sians, points to a race of spiritual creatures — but
of a malignant type when he speaks of beings,
not made of flesh and blood, inhabiting the air
around us and able injuriously to affect man-
kind."

In his criticism of a work on psychology by a
foreign savant, Dr. Hereward Carrington, of
whom the late Professor James, of Harvard,
spoke to me with keen appreciation and whom he
regarded as one of the best-informed and most
open-minded of psychical researchers, wrote as
follows: "When I wrote my book, The Coming
Science, some years ago, I contended (pp. 59-78)
that there was really no good first-hand evidence
that spiritistic practices induced abnormal and

[ 200 ]

The Inevitable Inference

morbid states and conditions to the extent usu-
ally supposed. Further experiences have caused
me to change that opinion. I now believe that
the danger of spiritistic practices is very great,
and I think that this aspect of the problem is one
that should be more widely discussed and more
attention should be given to it by members of the
Society for Psychical Research. The recent writ-
ings of Viollet and Mr. J. Godfrey Raupert
should be more widely known. But it is probable
that all these books would not have influenced
me had I not seen several examples of such detri-
mental influence myself — cases of delusion, in-
sanity and all the horrors of obsession.

"Those who deny the reality of these facts,
those who treat the whole problem as a joke, re-
gard planch ette as a toy and deny the reality of
powers and influences which work unseen, should
observe the effects of some of the spiritistic mani-
fesations. They would no longer, I imagine,
scoff at that investigation and be tempted to call
all mediums frauds, but would be inclined to admit
that there is a true terror of the dark, and that
there are 'principalities and powers' with which
we, in our ignorance, toy, without knowing and
realizing the frightful consequences which may
result from this tampering with the unseen
world."

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The New Black Magic

"There are more plausible reasons than many
imagine," wrote Mr. Dale Owen, a spiritist,49
"for the opinion entertained by some able men,
Protestants as well as Catholics, that the com-
munications in question come from the powers
of darkness and that we are entering on
the first steps of a career of demoniac mani-
festations the issues of which men cannot con-
jecture."

These are weighty and significant words
when we bear in mind the quarter from
which they emanate. They are surely cal-
culated to arrest the attention of even those
who are most infatuated with the plausible and
seemingly reasonable contentions of the "New
Revelation."

I cannot, then, in conclusion, and in full view
of all the facts of the case, better sum up the en-
tire argument of this book than in the form in
which I have summed it up at the end of my re-
cently published pamphlet:50

The occult Phenomena, evoked and observed
and studied in modem times, are no discoveries
by science of hidden but normal powers in man
which may be legitimately utilized and cultivated,

"Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. P. 38.
50 Spiritistic Phenomena and their Interpretation, published at
682 Main St., Buffalo, N. Y. Incl. postage, 25 cents.

[ 202 ]

The Inevitable Inference

and by means of which the spirits of the dead can
be made to furnish proof of their survival, and
by which they can impart useful knowledge to the
world. Their induction is a revival, in modem
form, of that ancient Necromancy and Black
Magic, which was and is today practiced by most
uncivilized or partially civilized races, and which,
both the legislators of the Jewish race and the
teachings of Christ and of the Christian Church,
in every age, and in the most emphatic terms, rig-
idly condemned.

It is a movement of thought, in violent and
bitter antagonism to the Revealed, Supernatural
Truths of Christianity, tending to separate the
human soul from the supernatural order and re-
ducing it to that state of helplessness and natu-
ralism from which Christ came to set it free.

Its appearance, in our time, is a literal and
startling fulfillment of remarkable zvords of
prophecy and zvarning, uttered nearly two thou-
sand years ago.

The text of the Decree of the Holy Office,
dated April 27, 1917, runs as follows:

"Question. — Whether it is allowable to assist
at spiritistic communications or manifestations
whatsoever, even though they bear the appearance
of being honest and pious, through a medium as

[203]

The New Black Magic

he is called, or without him, and whether hypno-
tism is used or not, either by interrogating souls
or spirits, or hearing their answers, or else by
simply looking on, although one tacitly or ex-
pressly protests that he does not wish to have
anything to do with evil spirits. The answer is
in the negative all round."

[ 2°4 ]

IX

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE OUIJA-
BOARD

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE OUIJA-
BOARD*

The recent revival of spiritistic practices in all
parts of the world is leading increasing numbers
of persons to try experiments with the ouija-
board — a simple and seemingly harmless contriv-
ance, by means of which messages are often ob-
tained which have all the appearance of coming
from the spirits of the dead. So rapidly has this
practice spread in this country that there are
few families today who have not come in touch
with these experiments in one way or another
and who have not at least heard of the startling
communications which, in many instances, have
been elicited from the little board.

The consequence is that reflecting persons
everywhere are asking questions respecting the
matter which are calling for an answer, and those
of us who, by reason of prolonged and painstak-
ing investigation, are more intimately acquainted
with the subject, cannot but feel that it is of the
utmost importance that the answer which is given
to these questions should be an adequate and cor-
rect one.

For practical purposes we may divide the ex-

*In order to make this essay a separate and consistent whole,
the repetition of a few references was unavoidable.

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The New Black Magic

perimenters with the ouija-board and similar con-
trivances into two classes of persons. Those of
the first class look upon the little board purely as
a toy, and as a means of amusement and enter-
tainment. While fully admitting that the mes-
sages obtained under their hand are often very
strange and surprising and quite contrary to
what might be expected, they nevertheless hold
that a natural explanation can and will no doubt
be found for them. Such persons have observed
how often a message received is foolish and silly,
how frequently the answer given to a question
is false or at least highly improbable, and in how
many instances the statements made by the board
are manifestly mere echoes or reflections of their
own thoughts, or the presentation of incidents
long forgotten but nevertheless stowed away in
their memories.

To the second class belong many intelligent
persons who have studied the matter more closely
and who have become entirely convinced that the
natural explanation does not cover all the facts
of the case, and that in many instances at least
an external and independent mind must be ad-
mitted to be at work in connection with the trans-
mission of the messages. In confirmation of this
belief they point to the nature and content of
some of the messages: the display of informa-

[208]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

tion, often intimate and accurate, which is known
to be only in the mind of the experimenter and
of some person deceased, a knowledge of events
and circumstances connected with persons and
places at a distance and on inquiry found to be
correct, the incessant emphatic assertion of the
board itself that it is moved by the surviving
spirit of some deceased human being.

Now the question which is everywhere being
asked is: "How are these conflicting views and
experiences to be reconciled? What is really the
truth about the matter ?"

In reply to these questions it may be said at
once that both views are correct in a sense.

The scientific experiments of many years, in
many countries, and carried on under strict test
conditions, have shown conclusively what the
process is which is at work in the eliciting of these
mysterious messages and how their source and
origin can be determined.

We have to recognize two clearly established
facts :

1. Recent psychological research has demon-
strated that the human mind is a far more com-
plex and intricate organism than was at one time
supposed. A very great part of its operations is
what is termed subconscious, lying below the
threshold of the ordinary conscious working

[209]

The New Black Magic

mind. This subconscious part of the mind may
be regarded as a kind of mental storehouse or
registry, for in it are stored up and recorded,
accurately and permanently, all the complex and
many-sided experiences of our life. There is,
strictly speaking, nothing, from our childhood
upwards, no impression received, no word heard
or uttered, no picture looked at, no occurrence or
incident, no feeling or emotion, of which a rec-
ord is not preserved in the secret recesses of the
subconscious mind, however unable the normal
working mind may be to recall them. It is only in
dream states, or in abnormal conditions of mind,
such as hypnosis or trance, that there occurs what
is called a subconscious "uprush" and that we
become aware of the complexity of our mental
nature and of the extent of our possessions.

"We should not overlook the fact," writes the
Boston psychologist, Dr. Morton Prince, "that
among mental experiences are those of the inner
as well as the outer life. To the former belong
the hopes and aspirations, the regrets, the fears,
the doubts, the self-communings and wrestlings
with self, the wishes, the loves, the hates, all that
we are not willing to give to the outer world and
all that we would forget and would strive not to
admit to ourselves.51 All this inner life belongs

"The Unconscious. P. 85.

[2IO]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

to our experience and is subject to the same laws
of conservation."

2. The second fact which we have to recognize
and keep in mind is that experiments have shown
that in proportion as the activities of the con-
scious working mind are moderated and a state
of passivity is induced, this subconscious part
of the mind begins to act more freely and, after
a time, -automatically, and without the conscious
co-operation of the experimenter, to yield up some
of its contents. And the normal mind, having in
its state of passivity no power of selection or con-
trol over the material thus projected by the sub-
conscious mind, the latter acts in a most hap-
hazard and disorderly manner, in many instances
projecting things most amazing and unexpected
and unrecognizable by the normal mind. Care-
fully conducted experiments, however, and a
rigid scrutiny of the life-history of the experi-
menter and of the contents of the messages re-
ceived have also shown that, as this passive state
of the mind is increasingly developed and culti-
vated by frequent experiments, a door is gradu-
ally opened through which it is possible for an
external intelligence or spirit to invade the mind
and to gain access to the contents of this well-
furnished subconscious storehouse.

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The New Black Magic

It would not be possible, in a brief paper of this
kind, to give all the evidence in support of this
assertion. I can but state here that all the best
experimenters have come to this conclusion and
that the fact can today only be doubted by those
who have no accurate knowledge of the subject,
whose own experiences have never carried them
beyond the subconscious stage, or who are pre-
disposed against belief in a spirit-world. The
most skeptical person, least inclined to believe in
spirit-activity in connection with these experi-
ments will, on reflection, be constrained to admit
that an external mind must be admitted to be at
work where an incident is related by the board
which is taking place at a distance and the truth
of which is established on inquiry, or when a
message is conveyed in a language which the ex-
perimenter has never learnt and which, on being
translated, is found to be consistent and intel-
ligible. And, needless to say, many such mes-
sages, some of them far more wonderful, have
been received by means of automatic writing in
all parts of the world.

Now it is in the clear recognition and applica-
tion of these two facts stated that the solution of
the problem presented by the ouija-board is to
be found.

All depends on the peculiar mental condition of

[212]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

the experimenter. At the beginning of the ex-
periment, and before the mind has attained any
great degree of passivity, the messages may be
wholly normal, the slightly awakened subcon-
scious mind becoming active and automatically
and disconnectedly communicating some of the
contents of its storehouse through the little
board or pencil. It may even falsely claim to be
an independent personality — the spirit of a de-
ceased friend or relative, especially if the experi-
menter strongly inclines to this belief and uncon-
sciously suggests it to the subconscious mind.
By far the larger proportion of the amusing
messages and answers to questions with which we
are all familiar are received where this moderate
degree of passivity has been attained and where,
as a consequence, the experimenter has no sus-
picion of peril or of being on dangerous ground.
The board may make a flippant joke, consistent
with the peculiar temperament of the experi-
menter, it may cause surprise by telling the age
and other particulars, unknown to the others, of a
person present; it may perform a variety of feats
causing the greatest possible amazement. And
an independent intelligence may, of course, be
connected with the production from the very be-
ginning. But so long as the statements made con-
tain no matter foreign to the mind of the experi-

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The New Black Magic

menfer and no answer to a question which might
not have been projected from the subconscious
storehouse, there is no valid reason for assuming
the presence of an outside intelligence.

In proportion, however, as these experiments
are continued and as the mind becomes more pas-
sive and lethargic, the phenomenon begins to
change its character and imperceptibly to pass
from the natural into the preternatural. While
subconscious automatic activity still continues,
a message is jerked in here and there which is of
a startling character and which is often seen at
once to be no part of the experimenter's own
mental outfit. Events taking place at a distance
are accurately reported and commented upon.
Disclosures are made respecting the character
and doings and intimate personal affairs of per-
sons not known to the experimenter. Messages
are given, clearly and conclusively indicating
knowledge and information wholly beyond the
reach of the writer's own mind. And they are
conveyed in a form and manner suggesting the
presence of a critical and observant mind and of
a judgment quite at variance with that of the
experimenter.

When, in view of such astonishing communica-
tions, further questions are asked, the answer is
generally to the effect that the spirit of some de-

[214]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

ceased friend or relative of the experimenter is
present, that he has discovered this simple means
of communication and that he is anxious to cul-
tivate the intercourse thus established for the
benefit of the experimenter and the human race
at large. For is it not a blessing of the highest
order, it is urged, to obtain evidence that the dear
departed dead are certainly alive and are all
around us, and is it not perfectly lawful for us
to receive from them advice and direction, not
only as regards some of the greater problems of
life, but also respecting our more immediate tem-
poral concerns and anxieties? After a while
instruction is generally given how a greater de-
gree of passivity can be attained and how this
mode of intercourse between the worlds seen
and unseen can be made much more perfect and
profitable.

The experimenter, fascinated by these com-
munications, and convinced that he has come
upon a great and valuable discover}'-, readily
adopts the advice given and resorts to the ouija-
board habitually and systematically. Any doubt
expressed by others as to the true source of the
messages or the character and integrity of the
spirits operating, is brushed aside with a smile
of contempt, seeing that the messages breathe
nothing but kindness and benevolence and that

[215]

The New Black Magic

harm cannot be expected to be worked by a de-
ceased mother or sister or friend.

It is admitted, then, that while much ouija or
planchette writing is automatic and natural, in-
tercourse with spirits is and can nevertheless be
established by these means. Difficult as this con-
clusion may appear to some minds, it is never-
theless certain that, in view of the abundant evi-
dence, any other explanation would present
greater and indeed insuperable difficulties. The
further and all important question, therefore,
which presents itself is : Is the claim justified and
tenable that the spirits thus communicating are
in reality the spirits of the dead? May we ac-
cept and credit the testimony which they give re-
specting themselves ?

My reply to this question is that all the facts,
so far ascertained, not only go to disprove this
claim, but that there are in this belief and in these
practices grave dangers, mental, moral and phys-
ical, for the experimenter.

In support of this statement I would urge upon
the reader the following consideration :

Long-continued and carefully conducted ex-
periments have shown that :

1. It has never been found possible to conclu-
sively identify the particular spirit communicat-
ing.

[216]

Ti.e Truth About the Ouija-Board

The inexperienced experimenter will, of course,
jump to the conclusion that a deceased mother
or sister is present because the spirit making the
claim is in possession of knowledge of an inti-
mate character, can speak consistently and famil-
iarly of the deceased mother's past earth-life, can
mention little peculiar incidents or traits of char-
acter and of temperament not known outside the
family circle. But all such display of intimate
knowledge cannot be regarded as evidence of
identity today. The very circumstance that such
facts are recognized by the person to whom they
are presented proves that they are contained in
that person's memory and that they are therefore
accessible to and at the service of a spirit invad-
ing the passive mind. And the same applies to
handwriting, to peculiarities of expression, to
anything and everything that the experimenter
recognizes as characteristic of the person who
claims to be present. Experiments have shown
that even a hypnotized person can accurately
imitate any handwriting with which he may have
become acquainted during his life, even though
he may be unable to accomplish this in a normal
state. And, in automatic writing, the process is
identical except that the operator is not the sub-
conscious mind but a spirit. Instances are often
recorded in which some deceased person, quite

[217]

The New Black Magic

unknown to the experimenter, announces nis pres-
ence and for the purpose of identification, gives
the name he bore in his supposed past earth-life,
the mode and place of his death, and other similar
and striking particulars. And it is often found
that such a statement is correct even in detail.
But this, too, is no evidence at all of identity, since
we read in the newspapers of strangers dying in
certain places and under certain conditions every
day, and even though our interest be of the most
superficial and passing character, the subcon-
scious mind registers the fact. And the records
of spiritism testify that it is an easy thing for
these mysterious spirits to extract such infor-
mation from the subconscious mind and thus to
dramatize and impersonate such deceased per-
sonalities. There is abundant proof, too, to show
that they can, under given conditions, extract in-
formation from distant minds, with whom the ex-
perimenter is in some kind of rapport, and from
books and letters and other extant sources of in-
formation. But that these spirits are not the
individuals they claim to be is evident from the
fact that, in the manipulation of the information
thus gathered, they are apt to make the most dis-
astrous mistakes, fitting into the life-history of a
wife what belongs to that of a mother, exhibiting
ignorance of matters which the deceased person

[218]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

would above all other things have cause to re-
member, and involving themselves, upon being
questioned, in the most hopeless contradictions.

We have cases on record in which they have
boastfully admitted their trickery when found
out, and in which they have declared that they
have by means of this "mind tapping" of foolish
persons been able almost to work miracles.

Some years ago I had myself a striking expe-
rience of this kind, the spirit for many months
claiming to be a deceased friend of mine and fur-
nishing many remarkable proofs of his identity.
Upon being discovered in a manifest contradic-
tion and falsehood, however, and charged in the
name of God to reveal the true source of his in-
formation, he declared that he had got it all out
of our own silly "thought-boxes," it being pos-
sible for him to read the contents of the passive
mind with the same ease with which we read a
book or a newspaper.

It will be seen that, with such facts before us
and with such possibilities on the part of the
spirits, one could not under the most favorable
circumstances be sure that the spirit communicat-
ing is what it claims to be. Many high authori-
ties, confirming the accuracy of this statement,
might be quoted. I will here, for brevity's sake,
content myself with only one, the French astron-

[219]

The New Black Magic

omer, Professor Flammarion, who has been a
painstaking student of the phenomena for many
years. He writes52 : "As to beings different from
ourselves — what may their nature be? Of this
we cannot have any idea: Souls of the dead?
This is far from being demonstrated. The innu-
merable observations which I have collected, dur-
ing more than forty years, all prove to me the
contrary. No satisfactory identification has been
made."

That the spirits of the ouija-board are not our
departed relatives and friends, is, secondly, evi-
dent from that fact that

2. Their messages are for the most part frivo-
lous and contradictory and intellectually worth-
less.

There is in the minds of all men a natural and
instinctive awe of anything relating to the after-
life of the departed. Whatever our religious
views may be, we know that their trial time is
past, that, with the loss of the body, they have en-
tered upon a state of life in which the little trivi-
alities of the earth-life cannot count any longer,
but in which they are inevitably reaping the fruit
of their moral and spiritual achievements or neg-
lects. In view of this fact one is amazed to find
that these spirits, claiming to be our surviving

82 Mysterious Psychic Forces. P. 436.
[220 ]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

friends, either tell us nothing- at all of any value
respecting the after-life, or involve themselves,
when they attempt to do so, in the most hopeless
contraditions, one spirit denying what the other
emphatically asserts. We find them concerning
themselves chiefly with the most silly and fool-
ish affairs of the present life, telling us that John
is probably suffering from kidney trouble, that
Mary has lost her old brooch and that aunt
Emma's husband is not very kind to her, and
similar childish twaddle in which the deceased
was never known to indulge while in the body.

In many instances they presume to give advice
on the conduct of the affairs of our public or
family life, sometimes displaying an amount of
accurate and intimate knowledge which is aston-
ishing, and there are instances on record in which
such advice has been found to be good and accept-
able in the initial stages of the experiment. But,
in the course of time, and when confidence and
obedience have been secured, such counsel is apt
to change its character, causing, if adopted, ter-
rible disorder in the home and family life. In
many instances it is given by hint and suggestion
rather than by definite and explicit statement, the
spirit thus cautiously providing for himself a
way of escape from possible entanglements. I
have the report of numerous cases in which the

[221]

The New Black Magic

directions drawn from the contemptible little
board have separated husband from wife, a
mother from her children, friends from friends,
causing an endless amount of misery and suffer-
ing. It is, alas! in most instances only when it
is too late, when the mischief is done, that the
real mischief-maker is discovered and the truth
is recognized. It is a most difficult and some-
times quite a hopeless task to reason with a mind
which has passed under spirit-control and which,
by reason of that control, has lost the power of
judging fairly and squarely.

And it need hardly be pointed out that the mes-
sages bearing on matters of religion are equally
worthless and unreliable. For the most part they
are clothed in stately language, implying the pres-
ence of a superior and exalted mind, but their
contents are either empty platitudes or adapta-
tions to the thoughts and leanings which the
spirit perceives to predominate in the mind on
which it is operating. They are manifestly never
true presentations of the real state of things as
it is on the other side of life.

A spirit, striving to gain the confidence of his
victim, will be Catholic with a Catholic, Unitar-
ian with a Unitarian, even a Nihilist and Anar-
chist where such leanings are seen to prevail. It
will defend and declare the reasonableness of any

[ 222 ]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

absurd fad or belief that may be characteristic
of the inquirer.

When trust and confidence have been secured
the spirit will slowly begin to undermine any true
Christian foundation that may exist, deny the
divinity of Christ, the authority of conscience,
the responsibility of human life, and the reality
of a judgment to come. It will feed the mind
on empty platitudes, very acceptable to the nat-
ural man, but ultimately contradictory of the very
fundamental truths of the Christian Religion.

The very circumstance, known to all the
world, that those who embrace Spiritism always
cease to profess Historic Christianity, in any
form, is in itself ample proof in support of this
statement.

"The cultivation of these entities to religion,"
writes a thoughtful student of the subject,53 "in-
cludes the practical abolition of the Ten Com-
mandments, the introduction of revolting here-
sies into Christianity, and the propagation of
heathenism and atheism. All that we know of
disembodied intelligences is that they are intel-
lectually contemptible and that their influence
makes for the destruction of religion and moral-
ity."

But perhaps the most conclusive proof that

M Occultism in Psychical Research.
[223]

The New Black Magic

these spirits, communicating by automatic writ-
ing, are evil and not what they claim to be is,
thirdly, to be found in

3. The effect, physical, moral and mental,
which these practices are known to have upon the
experimenter. It would be necessary for one to
write a book were one to attempt to present the
conclusive and abundant evidence which is avail-
able on this point. Striking testimony has been
given in recent years by many scientific students
of the subject of the saner sort, and this testi-
mony is confirmed by the statements of numbers
of disillusioned spiritists. I can here but briefly
state the facts, but what I am stating is based
upon the observations and personal experiences
of many years and upon communications, often
of a private and delicate character, which have
reached me in the course of these years. Many
of these reports are painful in the extreme.

The facts briefly stated are these:

Persons habitually and systematically using
the ouija or planchette board, or similar auto-
matic devices for obtaining spirit messages, ex-
perience, after a time, a peculiar condition of las-
situde and exhaustion — in many instances accom-
panied by severe pain at the top of the spine and
gradually spreading over the entire brain. This
state of prostration is due to the now well-estab-

[224]

i

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

lished fact that, in order to obtain the movements
of the board, vital or nerve-energy is withdrawn
from the organism of the experimenter, often out
of all proportion to the physical health and con-
stitution.

In professional mediums who practice their
power incessantly and for pecuniary gain, this
prostration is apt to be so great that they be-
come complete nervous wrecks after a time. It
was the recognition of this fact which caused the
well-known physicist, Sir Wm. Barrett, to write :
"I have observed the steady downward course of
all mediums who sit regularly." The inexpe-
rienced experimenter scarcely ever attributes this
condition to the true cause, and it is difficult to
convince him that a practice, seemingly so simple
and harmless, could be attended by such direful
effects. But if, in spite of these warnings, the
experiments are continued, other symptoms ap-
pear which do not leave any doubt about the mat-
ter. The general health begins to fail, there
manifests itself a kind of apathy and weariness
of life, which quite unfits the person for the ordi-
nary duties of life and deprives him of all interest
in them, and which is only relieved by resort to
the board. Communication with the "friends"
of the unseen world now becomes the one exciting
and all-absorbing interest and occupation to

[225]

The New Black Magic

which all other duties and interests are subor-
dinated.

And in proportion as physical vigor, and there-
fore the power of resistance and of will, decline,
and passivity and apathy increase, the spirit gains
closer access to the mind, directs and influences
its operations, and, in the course of time, gets
complete control of it. When this control has
been effected and the power of resistance has
been quite broken down, the mind becomes more
and more susceptible to suggestion and less and
less able to exercise with regard to it discrimi-
nating and controlling power. The messages then
come with great regularity and conciseness, im-
mediately the experimenter touches the board;
but their moral tone is seen to have undergone a
very great change. From the normal and healthy
mind's point of view they are distinctly immoral
and mischievous in their aim and character.
They may refer to a husband or wife whose loy-
alty is questioned, or they may throw suspicion
upon the motives prompting the actions of
friends or relatives, especially if they happen to
object to these experiments. Or, in the case of
young people, the message may hint that the es-
tablished laws of morality are, after all, only con-
ventional laws, framed by man, and that it is not
necessary to be so strict — that certain instincts,

[226]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

imparted to human nature, were imparted by God
and may be lawfully obeyed, and that a time has
come when men must not allow themselves to
be enslaved by these old-time fetters any longer.
The Christian law is ridiculed and Christian cus-
toms and practices are declared to be old-fash-
ioned and out of date.

And these suggestions are made in the most
subtle manner, in exalted language, appealing to
the youthful imagination and to dangerous ten-
dencies latent in all men, and when it is borne
in mind that the invisible counsellor who makes
these suggestions is believed to be a kindly father
or mother, who could only desire the well-being
of her child and that the experimenter's power
of discrimination is lost, one can imagine how
far this kind of mischief can be carried.

As the "psychic development" advances the
entire mental and moral nature of the experi-
menter becomes disordered and he discovers to
his cost that, while it was an easy thing for him
to open the mental door by which the mind could
be invaded, it is a difficult, if not an impossible
thing, to shut that door and to expel the invader.
For the impulse to communicate or to write now
asserts itself imperatively and incessantly, at all
hours of the day and in the midst of every kind
of occupation and, in the end, even at night,

[227]

The New Black Magic

either suddenly awakening the victim or prevent-
ing him from securing any refreshing sleep. A
pitiable condition of mental and moral collapse,
often terminating in suicide or insanity, is fre-
quently the ultimate result.

Some years ago I came in personal contact
with a lady who had developed the power of au-
tomatic writing and who retired to bed every
night with sheets of paper and a pencil by her
bedside. The impulse to seize the pencil would
assert itself suddenly and imperatively, and she
could secure only an occasional hour of sleep by
devoting many preceding hours to the writing.
The lady was a physical and mental wreck.

Of the many cases of which I have record I
especially remember that of a young man in an
office in London who had fallen a helpless victim
to these experiments. While making an entry in
a ledger his hand would suddenly be jerked up
and down and the pen would then write down
wholly extraneous matter, often of a most offen-
sive character. He found it impossible to hold
his appointment.

The editor of one of our weekly publications
quite recently sent me the names and addresses
of three persons in one locality who had to be
confined to the asylum in consequence of these
practices, and respecting whom the attending

[228]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

physician stated that "the use of the ouija-board
had brought about a state of dementia."

But lest anyone should imagine that I am mak-
ing my case too strong and that I am overstating
the seriousness of the matter, I will quote what an
American scientific student of the subject has to
say about it. Dr. Hereward Carrington sums up
his warnings against the practice of automatic
writing in the following words:54

"I doubt not that hundreds of persons become
insane every year by means of these experiments
with the planchette board,55 as the present sub-
ject would have done had she not stopped her
experimenting in time. . . .

"The way the board swore on occasions was
extraordinary, and on several occasions it called
Mrs. C. and others names which they had never
heard till they saw them spelled out on paper, and
are of such a nature that I cannot give them
here."

Or, as Dr. Carrington says in his introduction
to the work of a foreign savant :

"Those who deny the reality of these facts,
who treat the whole problem as a 'joke,' regard
planchette as a toy, and deny the reality of powers
and influences which work unseen, should ob-

MThe Problems of Psychical Research.
MA Modification of Ouija.

[229]

The New Black Magic

serve the effects of some of the spiritistic mani-
festations. They would no longer, I imagine,
scoff at these investigations and be tempted to
call all mediums merely frauds, but would be in-
clined to admit that there is a true 'terror of the
dark' and that there are 'principalities and
powers' with which we, in our ignorance, toy,
without knowing and realizing the frightful con-
sequences which may result upon this tampering
with the unseen world."

Some people, and amongst them scientific men
of standing, are apt to defend these practices and
to encourage them because, in their opinion, they
furnish tangible evidence that our departed
friends and relatives have survived the death of
the body and that their individuality has suffered
no change. They claim, to put it briefly, that the
age-long problem perplexing mankind is solved
by the ouija-board.

At first sight this contention seems reasonable
and many cannot see how it is to be controverted.
But fuller reflection must disclose the fallacy
that underlies it. For centuries distracted hu-
man nature has stood by the open grave and, dis-
satisfied with the answers furnished by the Chris-
tion Religion and by the soul's emphatic testi-
mony, has besought God with tears to give proof
that the person departed is not really dead. Mil-

[230]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

lions of distracted minds are asking for such
proof today and, indeed, this is one of the causes
which are so effectually promoting the revival of
Spiritism at the present time.

But only very rarely, under exceptional and
peculiar conditions, and without any initiative
on the human side, has such proof been given.

Are we then seriously to credit the claim that,
while God, in His wisdom, denies the evidence
craved for in earnest prayer to the mass of man-
kind and to the very best of them, He furnishes
that evidence through the ouija-board,to the most-
frivolous inquirers, and by means unquestionably
perilous to the mental and moral health of those
through whom it is furnished?

Can anything more improbable be conceived?
If this were really so would we not have to part
with our instinctive feelings of reverence for
God, and our sense of His holiness and justice,
and would we not have to admit, in view of the
facts which I have presented, that such a method
of disclosing so significant a truth to us, is of-
fensive to our reason and common-sense? It is
surely only a science which has entered on
crooked paths and which has lost all sense of the
true proportion of things that can make such a
claim and that can induce inexperienced persons
to venture on these perilous quicksands.

[231 ]

The New Black Magic

Very justly remarks the American psycholo-
gist, Dr. Quackenbos :56

"It may well be asked, if communication with
the dead be lawful and fraught with satisfaction,
would God have concealed from us so innocent a
means of gratifying the most intense longings of
human nature ? The answer of the Centuries is :
No! The proof of immortality is not to be
sought for in the vaporings of Spiritism."

In view, then, of the undeniable and now very
widely admitted facts stated here in mere out-
line, one cannot warn the public too earnestly
against these practices — seemingly so simple and
harmless and yet attended, in so many instances,
by such fatal consequences. They have about
them a peculiar and almost irresistible fascina-
tion for a certain order of mind, and that fasci-
nation becomes intensified by the very elusiveness
of the phenomena and the lack of definiteness and
finality which characterizes the communications.
The mind is kept in a chronic state of expectancy,
incessantly craving for further disclosures. It is,
therefore, the first step that counts, and parents
and educators should see to it that that first step is
never taken. Where the practice has been care-
lessly indulged in, it should be rigidly discontinued
before any appreciable degree of development is

"Body and Spirit.

[232]

The Truth About the Ouija-Board

reached. For more reasons than one the board
should not be tolerated in any Christian house-
hold or placed within the reach of the young.
And we should also guard them against coming-
in contact with a form of modern literature call-
ing itself scientific in which these practices are
encouraged by men whose one aim is to obtain
evidence of human survival, but who have no
regard for the moral and physical well-being of
those to whom they appeal. It should be pointed
out that all truly scientific and informed men,
such as Dr. Mercier in London, Dr. Viollet in
France, and the late Dr. Lapponi in Italy, have
branded these practices as dangerous to mental
and moral health, and have seriously warned
against all such tampering with the unseen world.
They assure us, on the ground of personal ex-
perience, that the number of the victims of these
cults is increasing day by day.

The practice itself is no discovery of modern
science — nothing new in the world of phenomena,
as some would have us believe; on the contrary,
it is as old as man. In China the little board has
been known for centuries and is admitted to be a
means of spirit-intercourse. In one form or an-
other these practices were indulged in by the
pagan races and may indeed be considered to be
characteristic of the pagan civilizations. They

[233]

The New Black Magic

were condemned and forbidden by the laws of
Moses because they were known to undermine
and destroy the true spiritual life of the people.
Tliey fell into disuse in proportion as the light
of Christianity spread through the world. Their
revival, in our time, is not a step forward but a
step backward ; it is a return to distinctly heathen
and anti-Christian beliefs and practices and addi-
tional evidence of the fact that the world is once
more relapsing into paganism.

[234]

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE

The manuscript of this work was completed and was
in the hands of the publishers when Prof. W. J. Craw-
ford's second book on the "Phenomena of Spiritism"
appeared. I could not, therefore, consider it in its
bearing upon the standpoint taken up in my work.
But I regard the book as of high scientific value, present-
ing as it does the conclusions of a careful and painstak-
ing investigator who has guarded against every pos-
sibility of error and deception and who has the cour-
age of his opinions.

Prof. Crawford's book certainly demolishes once for
all the notion still entertained by a few inaccurately
informed {students of the subject that some of the
earlier scientific experimentators may have been tricked,
or that the operation of some at present little-known
mental faculty may explain the phenomena. In view
of the evidence presented by Prof. Crawford, confirmed
as it is by scientific testimony from many lands, it
will be admitted that this view may now be regarded as
obsolete and unscientific — as an evidence of ignorance
rather than of superior intellectual insight.

All these conceivable explanation, it should be borne
in mind, were weighed and carefully considered for
years before the positive conclusion held today was
arrived at. For those who (are accurately and experi-
mentally acquainted with modern psychical research there
are today only two problems presenting themselves for
solution and they may be formulated in the two fol-
lowing questions :

i. What is the source and character of the delicate
substance or plasm displaying! itself in the physical
phenomena of spiritism? and

2. What is the nature and aim of the extraneous

[235]

The New Black Magic

intelligence or intelligences operating in the sense world
by its means?

With almost everything Prof. Crawford has to say
on the first point I am in agreement.

His conclusions on the second point I find it impos-
sible to accept and the present book explains in detail
why I cannot accept them.

I am las convinced today as I was more than twenty
years ago that an adequate study of the effects of spiri-
tistic practice, mental, moral and physical, as a whole
and not as we observe them in some isolated instance,
will establish the consistency and reasonableness of my
position.

J. G. R.

[236]

INDEX

INDEX

A

PAGE

Apostolic testimony re Spirit-Creed 141

Aquinas, St. Thomas, on Demonism . .'. 37

Argument of book summarized 202

Armstrong, Prof., on spiritistic practices 171

Atonement of Jesus Christ and human nature 136

and Holy Scripture 129

Sir R. Reynolds on ., ! 131

and Saints and Martyrs „ 130

Augustine, Saint, on Eternal Punishment 146

Automatic Writing, Sir Wm. Barrett on 98

Doctor Carrington on perils of 201

Stainton Moses on effects of 67

perils of 56

cases showing perils of 61

B

Barrett, Sir. Wm., on perils of spiritistic practices. .39, 55, 61

on probable nature of some spirits 200

Branco, Prof., on the descent of man 114

Brownson, Dr. O., on fall of man 124

on spirit-identity 105

Bruce, H. A., on the subconscious mind 87

Bumueller, Dr., on the descent of man 114

C

Carrington, Dr. H., on medium's loss of weight 68

on perils of automatic writing 58, 201

on spirit-impersonation 83

Chesterton, G., on fall of man 119

on religious belief 10

Christian Thought and Experience, evidence of Ill

Christianity, Rev. M. Maher on truth of 134

and Spiritism, not reconcilable 11

Claim, the, of Modern Science 3

of Science specified 19

Crookes, Prof., on effects of mediumship 69

Crozier, Dr, J, B„ on spiritistic practices 169

D

Decree of Holy Office 203

De Maistre, on the heart of man 123

[239]

Index

PAGE

Descent of man, Prof. Branco on 115

Dr. Bumueller on 114

Dr. Driesch on 116

Dr. J. Ranke on 115

Dr. R. Virchow on 116

Doyle, Sir Conan, false assertion of 138

on spirit-impersonation 85

E

Eternal Punishment, Saint Augustine on 146

W. E. Gladstone on 150, 157

and human reason 151

Dom A. Vonier on 151, 153, 156

Evidence of Christian Thought and Experience Ill

of Common Sense 165

of Fact and Experience 49

of History 31

of True. Science 79

F

Fact and Experience, Evidence of 49

Fall of Man, Dr. O. Brownson on 124

G. Chesterton on 119

Prof. Wm. James on 123

Dom A. Vonier on 120

Flammarion, Prof., on spirit-identity 106

Funk, Dr., a case of spirit-impersonation 91

G

Gardner, Prof. P., on Necromancy 172

Gladstone, W. E., on Eternal Punishment 150, 157

on Orthodoxy 136

H

Hatch, Dr. B. F., "Spiritualism unveiled" 182

aHelI and its Problems" 147

History, The Evidence of 31

Holy Office, Decree of 203

Holy Scripture, on the Atonement of Jesus Christ 129

teaching of, on Necromancy, &c 34

on the testing of Spirits 142

Hubbel, Mr., "Facts and Fancies in Spiritualism" 183

I

Immortality and Reason 174

inference, the inevitable, from arguments presented 193

[240]

Index

PAGE

J

Jacks, Dr. L. P., on spirit-identity 85

Jacolliot, M., on spiritism in India 34

James, Prof. Wm, on the fall of Man 123

on the limitations of spirits 89

Jesus Christ, M. Troubetzkoy on Person of 128

Justin, Saint, on spirit-manifestations 37

L

Lapponi, Dr., on contradictory teaching of spirits 43

Leaf, Mr., on spirit-impersonation 84

Lillie, Mr., on mediumship of Stainton Moses 63

Lodge, Sir Oliver, on supposed safeguards 55

on spirit-identity 82

Lombroso, Prof., on medium's loss of weight in material-
ization 69

London "Times," on spirit-revelations ,,,,,, 177

M

Maeterlinck, Mr., on spirit-identity 97

on source of spirit-messages 98

on triviality of spirit-messages 178

Maher, Rev. M., on the truth of Christianity 134

Materialization, description of process 64

experiments of Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing 69

Carrington on loss of weight in 68

Lombroso on loss of weight in 69

Mediums, their status 184

Mediumship, disastrous effects of 57

not a natural gift 51

process contrary to nature 53

Prof. Crookes on effects of 69

Mind-passivity, an open door 5

Modern Science, claims of 3

Myers, F. W. H., on spirit-identity 98

N

Necromancy, Catholic Encyclopedia on 33

Prof. P. Gardner on 172

New International Encyclopedia on 32

"New Revelation," The, a great delusion 193

conditions for considering a 26

O

Orthodoxy, W. E. Gladstone on .• 136

Ouija-Board, truth about the 207

[24I]

Index

PAGE

p

Pasteur, Prof., on discernment of divine truth 161

Preface iii

Prince, Dr. Morton, on the subconscious mind 87

Q

Quackenbos, ,Dr. J. D.,

on unlawfulness of Spiritism 176

R

Ranke, Dr. J., on the descent of man 115

"Raymond," worthlessness of evidence respecting identity of 131

Reason and common sense, evidence of 165

Reynolds, Sir Russell, on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. . 131

S

Schrenck-Notzing, Dr. Von, on materialization phenomena.. 69

on effect of materialization on medium 72

Science, Evidence of True 79

Spirit-identity, Dr. O. Brownson on 105

Dr. Carrington on 83

Sir Conan Doyle on 85

Prof. Flammarion on 106

Dr. L. P. Jacks on 85

Mr. Leaf on 84

Sir Oliver Lodge on 82

Mr. Maeterlinck on 97

F. W. H. Myers on 98

Spirit-impersonation, a striking case of 89

Evidence of „ 82

Dr. Funk's case of 91

Spiritism and Holy Scripture 142

Spiritistic Phenomena, Dr. R. Wallace on reality of 112

Spiritistic Practices, Prof. Armstrong on 171

Dr. Carrington on perils of 200

Dr. J. B. Crozier on 169

Spirit-messages, comic element in. 178

worthlessness of 94

Spirit-Photography, Traill Taylor on 93

worthlessness of evidence of 94

Stainton Moses, on effects of automatic writing 67

on lying Spirits 43

on mind-passivity 53

on Spiritism and Christianity 12

Subconscious Mind, the, H. A. Bruce on 87

Dr. Morton Prince on 87

Summary of argument of Book 202

[242]

Index

PAGE
T

Table of Contents ii

Traill Taylor on Spirit-photography 93

Troubetzkoy, on the Person of Jesus Christ 128

True Science, the evidence of 79

Truth, the, about the Ouija-Board 207

U

"Unseen World," by Rev. A. M. Lepicier, O.S.M 193

V

Venzano, Dr., on reality of spiritistic phenomena 50

Virchow, Dr. R., on the descent of man 116

Vonier, Dom. A., on Eternal Punishment 152, 153, 156

on the fall of man 120

W

Wallace, Dr. A. Russel, on reality of spiritistic phenomena 112

Williams, J. H., on Christ's teaching re future life 149

[ 243 ]

"Has the stage, the so-called artistic temperament,
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By
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PRINCESS

By
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